In Memory Of A Good Man
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: Jim Phelps and his IM Force must work to protect Dan Briggs' name and memory from disrepute. The mission that explains why Dan, Rollin, and Cinnamon all left Mission: Impossible.
1. Chapter 1

A long, blue car pulled up before the music store, and a tall man got out, shut the door with a determined push. A distinguished-looking man, flaxen-haired, eyes keen and blue in a square, handsome, tanned face. He went into the music store and could be seen inquiring of the owner, a middle-aged woman.

"I am looking for Georges Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite No. 1."

"Any particular recording?"

"Yes, I am partial to Davier's 1955 recording."

"Oh, I am sorry, sir. We don't have that recording. Can I interest you in the Berlin Philharmonic's recording from the same year? I think it is even superior. Herbert von Karajan, you know. His first year conducting the Philharmonic."

"Well, it's not what I wanted, but I'll listen to it and see what I think."

"Please come back to the listening booth, sir."

He followed her to the booth, took the record she gave him, put it on the turntable, and put on the headphones. Then he pulled photographs out of the record's sleeve. He felt a jolt of shock as he looked at the first one.

"Good morning, Mr. Phelps. The man you are looking at is a man you once knew well, Daniel Briggs. One year ago, as you know, he disappeared in the middle of a mission, leaving his team, the team you now lead, scrambling to complete the mission. They barely succeeded, but succeed they did. Dan Briggs, however, was never seen again until his body was discovered floating in a river four months later. Following investigations by another team, a mole was discovered in the Secretary's staff. He had sold the details of the mission to a government behind the Iron Curtain, a government discredited by one of Dan's missions. They kidnapped Dan and tortured him for information about the Impossible Missions Force. They wished to be able to reinstate themselves as a power among the Communist governments by demonstrating prowess in the intelligence field. Thankfully, they failed. Dan Briggs was a stronger man than anyone knew. He never talked. He told them nothing and saved the IMF. In recompense for which, they killed him."

Jim Phelps took a deep breath. The voice on the recording was not usually so poetic, but Dan Brigg's death had been a shock to everyone. There was no better IMF team leader than he, none who had ever commanded such loyalty.

"Now, however, one unscrupulous man has decided to turn Dan Briggs' legacy upside down. You may recognize the name of Henrich Janek. He was Under-Secretary to First Secretary Augustín Dalibor of the Communist Party of Herzvolakia, whose deposition was one of Dan's first great successes. He has spent the last decade on a personal vendetta to find out who deposed his superior and avenge his death. His brother just before he died this year created a machine that will take any recording of a voice and rearrange the sounds to make that voice say anything he wants. Now Janek has only to break into the vaults in the People's Museum in Herzvolakia's capitol city to gain access to the only known tapes containing Daniel Briggs' voice, recorded during his months of captivity. With these and his brother's machine, he can create recordings that will discredit not only Briggs and his team but all of the IMF's missions. Every mission will come under doubt as to its veracity, and future missions will be rendered useless.

"Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, would be to retrieve the tapes, destroy the machine, and thoroughly discredit Janek himself so that no government will ever believe anything he puts out. As always, should you or any of your IM force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Jim. This recording will self-destruct in five seconds."

Jim lit a cigarette to cover the smell of the self-destructing and took one last hard look at Janek. Slimy little man. Discredit Dan Briggs, would he? _Not on my watch._

As he went back through the shop, the owner said, "What did you think of the recording?"

"Not quite according to my taste, but thank you."

"Come back again, sir, but please don't smoke among the records."

He apologized easily and left the shop.


	2. Chapter 2

Phelps sat and looked through the packet of IMF agents available to him. Technically any team member could select any agents who were available at the time, but every team leader ended up with a core group of trusted agents who worked well together and were informally known as that leader's team. Jim had inherited his old friend Dan's team a year ago and was glad he did. He had never worked with such professional and talented individuals, not even in the team he'd left to take up leadership when Dan died. Thus he selected his core team of Rollin Hand, Cinnamon Carter, Barney Collier, and Willy Armitage.

Dan had once told him that his plans came to him, fully-formed, as he looked through the agents' pictures. Each different agent brought a different part of the plan and, in essence, told him what role he or she would play when he looked at their pictures. Jim didn't quite know how that worked, but Dan had been the most brilliant mission planner the IMF had ever had. He wished they could have worked together; he would have been willing to carry out whatever plans Dan's steady, methodical mind put together. With Dan as planner and Jim as action leader, their team would have been unstoppable. But now that would never be, and Jim Phelps was left hoping he could be a leader half as good as Dan.

His planning and choosing of his team members was considerably different than his old friend's. Once he received his mission instructions, his mind went to work immediately, analyzing what he knew of the situation, figuring out who he could go to learn more, making plans and discarding them. By the time he was ready to choose his agents, he knew what talents he needed and chose accordingly.

The most important person to start with would be Barney. A technical machine such as Janek's brother had invented would require the services of a technical mind like Barney's. No mission could possibly go through without Barney's inestimable talents. Then of course he would need the backup of Willy. Smuggling Barney in could not happen without Willy, and he would also be a valuable backup for Cinnamon. Willy preferred background roles such as servicemen that didn't put him much in the public eye. No one ever paid attention to a chauffeur or a meter-reader. Then he could get some work done. Cinnamon would be the distraction. She excelled at distractions. It wasn't just that she was beautiful. It was that she always knew just what to put into her roles to appeal to the person she had to distract, whether innocence, pathos, sensuality, bad temper, or professionalism. She had used them all to great effect and was always coming up with more. They would go for the machine and Janek himself, while Jim and Rollin dealt with the tapes. Rollin, the master of disguise and the quick-change, would have to play two different roles in the museum, providing Jim's distraction while Jim provided his backup. But they would both be playing backup to another agent, and he knew just who he wanted.

Moments later he threw down the packet of pictures in disgust. She wasn't available! Tina Mara was out on another job. The IMF had no one else who was so small, foldable, and lithe. Except…an agent who had left a year ago and vowed never to come back.

Phelps reached out for his telephone. "Hello, Cinnamon? This is Jim—Jim Phelps." His phrasing told her it was about a mission.

"Oh, hello, Jim! How are you?"

"Fine, fine, thanks. I was wondering if you'd care to have dinner with me." _It's a work meeting._

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not available this evening."

"How about lunch, then?" _It's urgent._

"Oh, yes, lunch would be lovely. Where shall we meet?"_ Don't come to my house._

"What about the China Garden on Broadway?" Chinese food meant a diner, and Broadway meant a particular diner on the other side of town from Broadway.

"Alright. I'll see you in an hour."_ Half an hour._ Times mentioned were always halved.


	3. Chapter 3

Cinnamon of the graceful figure and perfect, heart-shaped face could and did eat anything (Jim had seen her eat sheep's eyeballs in the Middle East and whale blubber in Alaska), but in her role as a fashion model, she ordered a salad and smiled at Jim over it, leaned forward and touched his hand with that slow and sultry smile she knew how to give when needed. "So what's it about, Jim?" she asked in the low, confidential, lover-like voice that was so hard to overhear in a crowded restaurant.

"Cinnamon, I want you to get ahold of Jack. I needed Tina Mara, but she's not available."

"Jack? Jack _Briggs?"_

"Yes, Jack Briggs. I know there was some resentment there at my taking Dan's place, which is why I want you to ask."

"Oh, Jim, I don't think it was resentment against _you._ If your father was killed the way Dan was, and you were as young as Jack, might you not run as far away as you could?"

"No. I would have gone and murdered the people who killed him myself, not gone and hid in Oxford. But we are obviously far different people."

"_Very_ obviously. Tell me everything, Jim, so I'll have some idea of the convincing I need to do."

Jim explained the mission and what they needed Jack to do. Cinnamon's eyes were bright and her mouth hard when he finished.

"Jack will come, don't you worry."


	4. Chapter 4

The team was all assembled in Jim's house, in the den/office that combined, like he himself did in his character, a mod sense of color and placement with a rich, traditional style. The colors were all black, white, and grey, except the occasional touch such as the red leather back of his antique European chair, and the furniture was all carved, ornate wood except the sleek, modern couches. It was the room of a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it and let no one question him on his taste. Not that anyone had to. His taste was impeccable.

"Barney, how does the machine look to you?" he asked.

"It's a very complex computer, but rigging it to do what we want won't be a problem," Barney answered, his handsome dark face intent. "The problem will be getting in and out. He's got it locked up tight in the lab in the government research facility."

"That's where Cinnamon and Willy come in. Willy, will you be able to manage the case?"

Willy, nearly as tall and as broad as a broad as a barn, laughed, the smile breaking over his serious face and removing every intimidating trace. "Yeah. It won't be a problem."

"Good. Now, Janek plans to break into the museum and get the tapes held in its basement vaults on Thursday night, which will give him time for restructuring them before his big announcement on Saturday. He'll be hiring us to do the break-in."

"And then we can give him fake tapes," Cinnamon said.

"No, we'll be giving him the real tapes. The man has an amazing memory for faces and voices, and he'll know whether or not the voice on the tapes is really Dan's or not. It will be Barney's job to get them back."

"Getting into the museum will be easy enough," Rollin said, from his casual perch on the arm of the sofa. "But with Barney occupied with the machine, how will we get through all the security around the vaults?" He nodded at the plans drawn up on a whiteboard. "None of us has the expertise to get through the laser corridor."

"We don't. Jack does."

"Jack?" Willy asked.

"You don't mean Jack Briggs, do you?" Rollin asked, his green eyes gone wide.

"Jack Briggs," Jim smiled. "She's been here the whole time."

A small, dark figure peeled itself away from the wall where it had been standing in an impossibly small sliver of shadow. Cinnamon and Willy both laughed.

"Boy, we sure are observant," Willy said.

"People only see what they expect to see," Jim grinned.

Rollin sat back and crossed his arms, shaking his head. Dan Briggs' younger daughter was kissing Cinnamon, being introduced to Willy and Barney, who had not met her before. She did not have her older half-sister Crystal's striking beauty, but she had a piquancy of her own in her tiny person (smaller than Tina Mara, he observed—more useful that way), her short, curly dark hair, her dark coloring, and her lack of specific racial features. Such a pity her father had trained her for things like safe-breaking, he'd always thought, because her looks would make her an excellent impersonator. He could see her as an Arab, Hispanic, Hungarian, Spanish, even southern Slav. A little makeup could turn her into an eye-catching beauty; a little fake dirt could turn her into an invisible peasant. No training for it. What a waste.

"Rollin, you've met Jacqueline Briggs, haven't you?" Jim asked.

"Of course. I got to see her in action once, the time Dan stole her from your team, remember that? How are you, Jack?" He smiled his wide, lopsided smile.

"Better than I was a year ago, thank you, Rollin. I never thought I would miss all this, not until Cinnamon called me two days ago." Her voice was more than a little British, with a soupçon of something even he couldn't identify. She'd grown up partly in England, he knew, and her mother had been half French and half Basque, and he was never sure if it was French, Basque, or Spanish coming out in the accent.

"Glad to hear it," he said. "Cinnamon, for one, was convinced you'd never come back."

"I had a chance to be on the British gymnastics team for Worlds, and then Cinnamon called me, and I realized I'd rather be here than on any podium. Dad didn't train me to earn medals, after all."

That was the difference between her and Crystal. The older Briggs girl had grown up resigned to her father's absences and finally determined to have her own life and career. The younger Briggs girl, born of a different mother and in a different country, lived for her father's rare visits in England, soaked up all the training he gave her, and wanted to follow his every step. His death had burst a rosy bubble of heroism and invincibility—no wonder she had run. She was older now, a mere year later, and knew what she was getting into. It was better that way. No IMF member could afford rosy-eyed innocence.

"Even though without Worlds you'll miss out on the Olympics in Mexico City this summer?" he pushed her.

She nodded. "Nothing's too much to give up for _this_ mission."

"It's good to know you've kept in training," Jim said. "But there's a twist this time. You've never played a role; you've always been the hidden member of the team. This time you've got several different roles to play. Think you can do it?"

She took a deep breath. "We'll see, won't we?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Secretary, the people you wished to see are here." Henrich Janek's assistant pronounced the word "people" with a great deal of distaste.

"Send them in," Party Secretary Janek ordered. He sat down impressively behind his large desk. A relatively small man with Slavic features, he had an air about him of power and strength, a kind of intensity in his grey eyes. Though his friend and under-secretary Viktor Kladivo was a taller, handsomer, younger man, he was dwarfed by the Secretary's character.

The disapproving assistant ushered in the three strangers.

"Ah, so you are the ones who won the lottery to have a tour of our governmental facilities!" Janek said for the benefit of the assistant. "Congratulations. Under-Secretary Kladivo here will arrange everything. Thank you, Tadeáš. That will be all." He turned back to the lucky winners and examined them as his assistant left the office.

Two men and a girl, in poor clothing that was obviously their best, one man Germanic in type, broad, light-haired, square, a masterful face, the other dark, shorter and thinner, rough-looking around the edges but with intelligent eyes. The girl was obviously a relative, as dark as he, with a defiant look. Far too young for the job he wanted them for, though.

"Prove who you are, please," Janek said when the door had closed, his geniality falling away.

He had been speaking Herzvolakian. The big man said in Czech, "We don't speak your language, but we can offer you Czech, German, or Hungarian."

He switched to Czech. "Prove to me who you are."

The man scowled at him. "Isn't the fact that Bohuslav sent us at your request enough? He told you he was calling in the Hungarians. Here we are. If you're not satisfied, we will leave."

_"You're_ Hungarian?" Viktor asked.

"I'm a Hungarian with German ancestry. These two are Hungarian Roma."

"_Gypsies?"_

"Yeah. Got a problem with that?" he growled.

"Karl," the dark man said softly, "calm yourself. Are you content, Comrade Secretary?"

"Why did you bring a child?"

"Child?" Now it was the dark man's turn to bristle. "My sister is the best man we've got, without even being a man. We don't do what we do without her. Show him, Zhaklina."

The girl went to the door, jumped up, grabbed the lintel, pulled herself up until her foot was on the doorknob, and then somehow was suddenly tucked up in the corner of the room, one foot on the door lintel and one on the top of the window frame cater-corner to the door.

Janek's eyebrows went up. He touched a button on his desk, and his assistant entered. "Have coffee sent in, Tadeáš."

Tadeáš nodded and left the office, never noticing the girl up by the ceiling. Janek grinned.

"You've made your point. Come down now."

She jumped, landed very lightly on the thick carpet, and said something in Hungarian to her brother. It was quite rude. It was obviously designed to find out if either of the Herzvolakians understood Hungarian, but they had not become top governmental officials by betraying everything they knew. She grinned and said, "The old fools don't know Hungarian."

"That'll make the rest of our plan easier," Karl replied.

"Zhaklina, speak so the comrades can understand you," her brother said in Czech. "She's a bit shy of it, not speaking it very well."

Tadeáš brought in coffee, and they all got down to the business of planning the People's Museum break-in.

Before they left, the younger man, whose name was Marko, asked, "It's none of our business, but why does a Party official need to steal from the People's Museum?"

"It _is_ none of your business," Janek answered, "but I will tell you that the Director of the People's Museum is secretly sympathetic to degenerate Western capitalism and intends to use those tapes for his own ends, like a selfish American. No one dares to oppose him, so patriots must take matters into their own hands."

Karl looked unconvinced, but Marko nodded, impressed. "I agree with you, Comrade Secretary. It is not every day we are paid for doing a patriot's duty."

Zhaklina made a comment in Hungarian under her breath, to the effect that Marko was too convincing a liar for his own good.

As they left, Janek said to Viktor in Herzvolakian, "Did you notice their names are Bulgarian, not Hungarian?"

"I did, Henrich."

"Put a tail on them, and prepare to have them arrested and shot after their job is done."


	6. Chapter 6

Jack asked later, "Do you think they understood the Hungarian?"

"As well as we understood the Herzvolakian," Jim answered.

"No one can control the reactions of blood pressure and pupil dilation," Rollin the human-behavior specialist said. "Janek's pupils were definitely indicative of alarm when you spoke. Now he'll be on tenterhooks about us and never suspect Cinnamon."

"Good," Jack said.

"You did well," Jim told her.

She bowed.

* * *

><p>The People's Museum was having a busy day. A whole school of children in Young Pioneers red neckerchiefs had come to view the art and historical artifacts of the glorious Herzvolakian Communist history, and a party of privileged society leaders from Kiev was having a guided tour. No one noticed an old man coming in with his young granddaughter, he bent, white-haired, and wrinkled, leaning on his cane and holding her hand, she in her school uniform, her long dark hair in two plaits down her back. He dragged her from exhibit to exhibit, explaining in the over-loud tones of the nearly-deaf how her father had taken part in all the most heroic exploits of the War. She obviously didn't care.<p>

After a long while, the old man demonstrated fatigue, and a kindly attendant found him a folding chair, which the girl placed in a corner in a quiet room. When the attendant came back, they were gone, their museum map left behind on the floor. The attendant, with an impatient huff at the rudeness of museum-goers, threw it away.

* * *

><p>There were almost as many people at Secretary Janek's reception. He knew most of them, Party officials and foreign visitors he was set to impress in two days' time, but there was one extremely beautiful woman, flanked by a very tall, handsome man, whom he had never seen before. The woman had pale hair in the latest style and deep brown eyes. Janek had been unimpressed by many a beautiful woman, but he had always had a weakness for blondes with brown eyes. He made his way over to her.<p>

"Madame, we have not been introduced."

She replied in Russian, "I am so very sorry, Secretary Janek. I do not speak your beautiful language. You speak Russian, of course?"

"Of course. I was just expressing my regret that we have never been introduced."

"Well, that is for good reason. I have never been here before. My name is Natasha Denisovna Griegoriev, and I am a television reporter from Moscow. This is my cameraman, Alexei Smertnovsky."

Smertnovsky handed Janek their credentials.

"You are from CT USSR Programme Three!"

"Yes, I am. The educational channel wanted me to try to get an exclusive from you before your announcement on Saturday." She smiled winsomely at him.

Janek laughed, "What, you wish for the story before it is a story?"

"Of course not, Comrade. But if, as we are led to believe, your announcement is going to revolutionize your government and its standing, the youth of the Soviet Union ought to know more about the life of such an influential man. I want an interview with you about your life, especially your war service, and about that of your celebrated brother the scientist, and even a chance to film the laboratories where you and he did so much on behalf of the war effort. I want to film tonight so that the whole program will be ready to air immediately after your great announcement."

"Tonight? Dear lady, we couldn't possibly film tonight! I have a very important meeting."

Her face fell. Her lovely eyes were truly disappointed.

"But perhaps I could give you time tomorrow."

"I don't know how we'd ever be able to get the program put together in so short a time, Comrade."

"Then perhaps you should not have left it until the last moment."

The brown eyes wavered and fell. "Well, to tell the truth, Comrade, I had to work hard to convince my superiors to send me with one cameraman. They thought this was all a lot of posturing on your government's behalf and that you could not possibly change the direction of this country now, not after the fiasco of ten years ago. I thought otherwise. They had to listen to me. My father has the ear of First Secretary Grishin of the Moscow Communist Party."

Janek swelled a little, with rage at her foolish, disbelieving superiors, and with some pride, that such a lovely woman in such a position in Moscow's power structure believed in him. Soon all of the Soviet Union would believe in him in the same way.

"Comrade Denisovna, I will do all I can for you. After the reception, I will be able to give you an hour, perhaps two, and then more time tomorrow morning at the research laboratory. I wish I could simply abandon my meeting for you, but when the First Secretary calls a meeting, his second-in-command must attend."

"I understand, Comrade. Thank you for your generosity."

"Thank _you,_ dear lady." He kissed her hand and went away reluctantly to greet other guests.

Viktor Kladivo had been observing the conversation from some little distance. Going toward the bar, he passed close behind the two Russians and paused a moment to straighten his tie in the reflection of a glossy black vase. The big man was saying quietly in Russian as the woman put a hand to her eyes, "What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's these brown contacts. They're driving me crazy."

Viktor passed on to the bar and beckoned his personal assistant to his side. "Find out about those two. Call CT USSR in Moscow and find out if she really does work for them."


	7. Chapter 7

Rollin crouched on the floor behind the huge sculpture in the corner, removing his old-age makeup while Jack kept watch. She didn't have to crouch to be fully hidden. When he was done and had changed his face slightly with a few swift strokes of a makeup pencil, leaving his black contacts in, he took watch while Jack pulled off her braids and wrapped them around herself to give her a little more womanly shape, put in blue contacts, turned her school jacket inside out to become a stylish top, and changed the shape of her skirt.

"Now watch out over my shoulder," Rollin whispered and held her chin to alter her eyes and mouth with his pencil from schoolgirl innocence to pretty young woman.

"Rollin, a museum guard's coming," she murmured when he was nearly done.

Thinking quickly, he slid the pencil into his sleeve, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, moving slightly to be seen around the edge of the sculpture. Jack stiffened and lost all character. The guard's footsteps were very close, and at this rate Rollin would be arrested for assault. He spread his hands along her spine in the practiced way he knew so well how to use. Handsome he might not be, but he'd never had a problem making women melt. He wasn't quite sure why that was. Willy was the handsomest man on the team, and he went all stiff among strange women. Like Jack was now. He'd _known_ this was a bad idea, but Jim had insisted that leaving her in the dark about this contingency was the only way to make her go along with it if it came up. He should have listened to his own instincts.

He moved one hand up to her neck and his mouth to just under her ear. "Come on, Jack, play along," he breathed, "or you'll get me arrested too soon."

Instantly she relaxed against him and stopped pushing at his arms.

"Much better," he murmured. "Now kiss me back."

"I hate you," she whispered and closed her eyes and kissed him.

The guard had a romantic mind, not a curmudgeonly one, and he rested his arm against the sculpture and observed for a moment with a smirk. Finally he cleared his throat, and they both jumped guiltily and leapt apart. Jack's face was bright red. Rollin hoped his was too. It was hard to manufacture a blush instantly.

"Don't you think there are better places for this than a museum?" the guard inquired.

"Well—" Rollin said in his best Herzvolakian, which was very bad indeed, "yes, but I see this—" he waved his hand at the sculpture "—so—so—of history and—how do you say—yes, glory, and I see this—" he stopped Jack from trying to hide her face in her hat "—she is my girl—so pretty—and together I am overcome."

"You must be an artist," the guard said indulgently.

"Oh, yes! How do you know? We come from Romania—to have the—the—" He made expansive motions with his hands.

"Inspiration?" the guard suggested.

"Yes! I think _this—"_ he patted the sculpture "—but small—_so—"_ He arranged Jack next to it in a similar attitude. "For it is about small things _and_ big things, yes?"

The guard examined Jack between narrowed eyes. "I think I agree. You know, I would have been an artist, if my father hadn't been against it. This is as close as I get."

"Oh." Rollin patted his shoulder sympathetically, relieving him of a set of keys as he did. "My father also—not happy. Much fight in family. My mother—so unhappy. Now father is dead. Your father lives?"

"No, dead now too." He sighed.

Rollin patted him again and returned the keys, gave him a shove. "You go! Make art! Not too late!"

The guard smiled at them. "Maybe I will. Thanks!" He walked away in a glow of hope.

"You are insane," Jack whispered, handing Rollin the molds she had made of the guard's keys.

"You have to be a little, in this line of work." He poured quickly from a bottle into the molds, crushed the bottle and dropped it in the trash, and shook the molds. Then he slipped them in his pockets and put his arm around her waist. "Come on, darling."

She glared at him. "Cinnamon would have played this much better than I."

"Yes, but Cinnamon can't slither between lasers. You know how it works, Jack. You do what's necessary. I'm sorry, though. You know I would have struck you just as soon as kissed you if the situation had warranted it."

"I know. I would rather you had struck me."

"That would have got us thrown out."

"Don't mind me. You just took me by surprise is all."

"You'll get used to it eventually."

"Do I want to?" she muttered and smiled brilliantly at the guard as they passed him in the next room.


	8. Chapter 8

Barney was trying to make sense of the tangle of Herzvolakian telephone circuitry. Finally he found the right wires and clipped on his overrides. Just in time, for he heard through the receiver propped between his shoulder and his ear that someone was asking the exchange for a number in Moscow, not knowing that the exchange was now sitting in the bushes right outside that very same building. Barney was not very good with accents, not like Rollin, Cinnamon, and Jim, but Rollin had coached him strictly on the few lines of Herzvolakian he would have to say.

"Exchange," he said in a very deep, very bored tone.

The voice on the other end said a long string of something he understood very little of, except the words for "television" and "Moscow."

"One moment please." He flicked the switch for the dialing tone, then flicked it off. "CT USSR," he said in his own voice in Russian, which he _did_ know perfectly. All IMF agents learned Russian before they learned anything else.

"I am calling from Secretary Henrich Janek's office in Herzvolakia, checking the credentials of all the press who have arrived today."

"Oh, yes? What can I do for you?"

"Can you confirm the names of the people you sent?"

"I think so. Please wait a minute." He made rustling-through-paperwork noises. "Ah, yes. I see we have sent Natasha Denisovna Griegoriev and Alexei Pavlovich Smertnovsky. You are lucky, Comrade, to have talent such as these two for your…event."

The voice on the line grew slightly frosty at the implication that an event in Herzvolakia wasn't even important enough for a Moscow television station to remember what it was about. "Can you tell me what they look like?"

"What they look like?"

"For security purposes. The First Secretary is to be present, and we can take no chances."

"Of course. Smertnovsky is a very big man. Very handsome. Dark hair and eyes. Everyone says he should be in front of the camera instead of behind it, but he's shy. Comrade Griegoriev is a beautiful woman, very perfect, very professional. Blond hair."

"And her eyes?'

"Blue, I think. Yes, grey-blue."

"Blue, you say?"

"Of course. Look, Comrade, if you want to see what she looks like, just look in yesterday's edition of the _Pravda._ She received an award and was featured. You _do_ get the _Pravda_ in Herzvolakia, don't you?"

"Of course," the voice snapped, though in truth the First Secretary and Secretary Janek were the only ones who received the celebrated newspaper. Herzvolakia wasn't actually important enough to receive much of anything from Moscow or Leningrad.

Barney heard rustling and finally an impressed grunt and grinned to himself. While Jacqueline was performing her gymnastic maneuvers in Janek's office earlier, Rollin had taken the opportunity to replace the _Pravda_ lying impressively on a table with a counterfeited edition bearing Cinnamon's picture and a nice little article, telling all about her contributions to the future of the Communist Party with her programs for youth on Programme Three.

His interrogator asked a few more question and finally hung up. Barney disconnected his wires, packed everything up, and crept back to his electrician's van sitting at the curb in broad daylight. He found Willy concealed inside.

"How'd it go?"

"Like clockwork," Barney grinned.

"Well, ours didn't. No laboratory until tomorrow."

Barney sighed. "That'll be cutting it close. I had planned on having two full nights to make my alterations."

"Can you do it in one?"

"I can, but I won't have time for testing."

Willy patted him on the shoulder. "You can do it, Barney. Anyway, you can take tonight to do a dry run."

"I suppose so."

Willy looked at his watch. "Rollin and Jack should be in hiding at the Museum by now. Looks like we all have a long night ahead. Cinnamon and I get to spend a few hours listening to Janek praise himself."


	9. Chapter 9

Using the hardened plastic keys they had made, Rollin and Jack had gotten into the closed-off inner areas of the museum, first taking one detour to clumsily knock over the easel and painting kit of a tall, blond artist making studies of various art works. He almost punched Rollin in the head for ruining his painting, but their friend the guard came to Rollin's assistance and separated them, while Jack helpfully picked up the scattered paints and slipped the key molds and Rollin's old-age mask into the art bag. Rollin apologized profusely in his bad Herzvolakian; Jim scowled at him and eyed Jack admiringly at the same time and then left with a bad grace when the guard asked him to.

Now Rollin and Jack were crammed in a tiny broom cupboard (almost unused, judging by the amount of dust and grime in it), waiting for closing hours and trying not to sneeze. They had already gone over the plan twice and were trying to think up new topics of conversation.

"Did you know we never knew you existed until you joined IMF?" Rollin asked. "Well—for that matter, we never knew Crystal existed either until she joined. Dan always was a very private man."

"Yes, he was," Jack said quietly.

"I'm sorry—does it bother you if I speak of him?"

"No. It's good to talk about him. No one at university could possibly understand. But what about you? All of you knew him as well as or better than I did."

"You think of people like us as strong, silent types, but some things we _have_ to discuss, in order to be able to get on with our jobs properly. That's why I'm going to ask why you left."

Jack shifted uncomfortably. "After Dad was killed, there really was no point, was there? I always hoped one day I'd get to work with him. He was the one who made me learn languages, take up gymnastics, do cat's cradle all the time for finger dexterity, study sociology and science. I always thought he was getting me ready for his team."

"Maybe he was. He never said. But you would have needed a lot more experience first."

"I know. And all I got was one mission. One little mission with my dad. And of course I learned that the Secretary was against relatives working on the same team, though he couldn't prevent Dad calling in Crystal when he needed her."

"She had much more experience than you."

"I know. But you know Jim agrees with the Secretary?"

"Yes. Cinnamon says Jim thinks you resented him for taking Dad's place."

"You and Cinnamon are very close, aren't you?"

"Yes, we are. But you're avoiding my question."

"Well, did you?" Jack challenged him.

"Did I what?"

"Resent Jim. From what I heard, you were the most likely candidate for my dad's job."

Rollin's green eyes looked down and away. "I don't deny that I gave some thought to it, but I'd worked with Jim before and recognized that he brought something this team needed."

"And what if you ever wanted to marry a team member and Jim wouldn't allow it?"

He laughed quietly. "Why would I ever do that? You're just putting off answering me."

"Fine. No, I didn't resent Jim for taking Dad's place. He wasn't the leader of the team we were both on, but he should have been. He's a good leader. But he never quite approved of me on his team. He always preferred working with Tina Mora. I think he thought I was only there because of Dad's pull. He thought I was too young."

"Jack—"

"He was right, though, Rollin. When I got away and was on my own at Oxford this last year, I realized a lot of things. I realized I wasn't doing this job to help my country and help people but just for the fun of it, like a teenager, and so I could be around my dad, like a child. It's kind of ironic that now that I'm ready to come back for the right reasons, my first mission is sort of avenging him."

"We were all ready for this one," Rollin said in a low voice. "Jim is a good leader, but he'll never be Dan. Dan was a great man. And a good one, too."

"Yes."

They were quiet for several minutes. Rollin finally said in a lighter tone, "Did you know I went to Cambridge?"

"Did you really?"

"Yes, just after the war. England needed American dollars, so I brought them in the form of tuition. That, oddly enough, was where the IMF found me, making myself famous by doing impressions. Winston Churchill was a great favorite, but of course anyone can do Winston Churchill. They were much more impressed when I fooled an entire audience into believing I had been replaced by another person after doing my makeup in full view of the audience."

"You impersonators. All you care about is fooling people."

"You'd make a pretty good impersonator yourself, you know."

"Dad didn't train me to be an impersonator."

"No, but I doubt he intended you to be confined by what he trained you to do. He wasn't half-bad at it himself."

"Hmm. But Cambridge, now. What were they doing looking for clever people at _Cambridge__?_"

"Well, they found one."

"The only one," Jack smirked.

"I suppose this means we'll have to be rivals."

"Of course it does."


	10. Chapter 10

Willy wheeled his large case of camera equipment into the government building that housed Secretary Janek's office. Under-Secretary Viktor Kladivo was there to meet him, being warm and friendly.

"I'm sorry to tell you that I must have your case searched," Kladivo told him.

Willy didn't believe he was sorry at all. "Oh, of course. That's quite usual. Please be very careful. The equipment is delicate."

A guard searched through the case thoroughly. Willy helpfully held several of the larger pieces of equipment for him. They found nothing, of course, and Kladivo led him and his case into the lift and up to Janek's office, where Cinnamon waited, chatting lightly with the Secretary. She had a voice recorder out next to her, quite obviously not recording. Hidden inside it was another recorder that had been recording all the while. She had been leading Janek into topics of conversation that used all of the Russian phonetic sounds they needed.

Willy started setting up his equipment while Cinnamon provided Janek with a list of the questions she wanted to cover in the preliminary interview.

"I am ready now, Natasha," Willy told her.

"Very well. Begin your lighting tests. Comrade Janek, we just need to film a moment to make sure the lighting is good. Just say something—anything. Maybe something in your own language. If it turns out well, we could use it to show the viewers you with your native language and environment. Viewers like that."

Jim's research had elicited that Janek loved to quote an old Herzvolakian poem on any occasion he could. It had almost all the Herzvolakian sounds they needed. Janek stood in front of his desk and quoted it, quoted it beautifully, in rich, rolling Herzvolakian.

When he was done, Cinnamon said in her own rich voice, "That was beautiful. I only wish I could understand it. Now, why don't you have a seat, Comrade, and we'll start with you telling about your farming childhood with your brother. Many of our city youth don't understand how vitally important farms are to the stability of our whole cause. I think they'll listen to you."

Willy played the cameraman for two hours, admiring Cinnamon's skill in drawing out her man, prodding him for the details that made him sound at his best, widening her eyes at all the right moments. When she and Janek were done, she turned to him. "Take that film straight back to the hotel and get it ready to send to Moscow, Alexei. We'll send the rest of the footage on tomorrow."

She turned back to Janek with a smile, which faded to be replaced by bewilderment and fear when she saw the gun in his hand pointed straight at her.

"Now then, _Comrade,_ tell me what all this song and dance has been about."


	11. Chapter 11

"Oh, Comrade Janek! What is this? What are you doing?"

"Please drop the act. We talked to the CT USSR people. Fully half your story is a lie. You don't have the backing of your father and First Secretary Grishin. You haven't spoken to your father in years. Your eyes aren't even brown. What is the meaning of this?"

Cinnamon sighed, put her hands up and took her contacts out, rubbed her eyes. "I admit the contacts were a somewhat foolish touch. But I just had to meet you, and using my father's name without his knowing it seemed the easiest way. Of course I haven't spoken to him! He disapproves of my support for you. He is trying to influence First Secretary Grishin to support Herzvolakia under its current government, despite the fact that his own sister, my favorite aunt, died during the coup ten years ago. Do you think I would support _him_ under those circumstances? I know what you're really trying to do, Comrade, and I came to see that you are seen as a hero among the youth of Moscow! If my father knew, I would lose my job with Programme Three, which I have worked hard to get. But after your announcement, he won't be able to do anything about it."

She could see he almost believed her, but he still kept the gun pointed at her.

"What do you mean, you know what I'm trying to do?"

"My cousin was Svetlana Baranovsky, your brother's assistant, who died with him in the car accident. We were very close, Svetlana and I, like sisters, especially after her mother, the aunt I mentioned, died, and she—well, she was in love with your brother, to be frank, and she told me all about him. Too much, probably. I mean, more than you would have wished her to. You don't know what young women are like when they're in love. She told me all about you, too. It was difficult not to, when you were so close to your brother. I became very interested. And I used to tease her with what I really believed. I would say, 'Svetlana, Mikula Janek is only the hands. It is his brother Henrich who is the brains. Mikula makes nice little machines, but Henrich will know what to do with them. Henrich will be the one with the power, while Mikula will be happy to stay in his laboratory.' She had to agree, of course, but she never stopped preferring your respected brother. While I—well…" She dropped her eyes. "I feel like a foolish schoolgirl, but meeting you has been my dream for several years now. Perhaps I will ask for your autograph and sleep with it under my pillow." She gave a self-deprecating laugh.

Janek almost put the gun away, but he had one more question. "Why the brown contacts?"

Behind Cinnamon, Willy gave a quiet snort of laughter. She swiveled around and glared at him.

"Be quiet, Alexei! You are enjoying this too much. Well, Comrade, I said the contacts were foolish, but I couldn't help it. I heard you liked brown eyes, you see, and I—I wanted you to like me." She looked away from him, feeling her face go hot. It was Rollin who had taught her the technique for summoning a blush, long ago, and now she did it far better than he did.

Putting herself into an embarrassing situation had been the perfect touch. Janek was practically preening himself under it. It had been Rollin's idea. For a man with a torturously devious mind, Jim's plans were sometimes extremely straightforward. It was his idea to use the brown contacts to attract Janek's attention, but Rollin had come up with the plan to let him find out about them. Cinnamon had a feeling Janek was learning to admire blue eyes as well.

He put the gun in his pocket. "I am sorry for frightening you, Comrade, but in my position, one cannot be too careful."

"Oh, I know, Comrade. I am sorry I didn't tell you the truth to begin with, but I didn't want you to think badly of my poor cousin, now that she is dead. May Alexei take the film away now? There is much to be done."

"Yes, he may."

Willy packed up his case, then walked around the desk to Janek. "Comrade, I'm not like a foolish schoolgirl, but it's an honor for me to meet you as well. Natasha combed through all the cameramen she works with until she found one who felt the same way she did. I'm lucky that was me." He pressed Janek's hand fervently, then went back to his case.

"Oh, Alexei, will you take this as well?" Cinnamon handed him her voice recorder. "We may get some better audio off it. I'll join you soon."

He took it and went out with Viktor Kladivo as escort.

Janek said, "I envy him."

"Oh, really, Comrade?"

"Not his looks, Comrade Denisovna, but the fact that he works so closely with you and has the privilege of calling you by your given name."

"Oh, Comrade Janek." Cinnamon rose slowly from her chair. "I did not dare to offer that you call me Natasha—but if you wish to, it would be my honor."

Janek took her hand and kissed it. "Then, Natasha, will you have a drink with me?"


	12. Chapter 12

Willy was being followed to the hotel. That was expected. Foreigners often stayed at this hotel, so the government probably had a person working there, and perhaps the rooms were bugged. He did nothing other than what he would have done if he really had been a cameraman, carrying in his large case and making it look heavier than it really was, taking it up in the lift to his room. He did a quick and unobtrusive sweep of the room, found a single audio bug and no cameras. It would be best to leave the bug: a cameraman couldn't be expected to know how to look for listening devices.

Barney entered the hotel a short time after Willy. Everyone who saw him stared at him. Black men were very rarely seen in the more provincial Soviet countries. It tended to relegate him to more service-based roles, but that was fine with him. They were more conducive to his skills. He inquired in Russian for the Russian cameraman's room and was sent up.

"Oh, good, you've come," Willy said at the door. "Comrade Denisovna wants this film prepped and taken to Moscow tonight. You'll have to help me."

Barney groaned. "I've been traveling all day. I'd hoped for a good sleep."

Willy shrugged. "Orders. Sorry, Comrade."

He sighed. "Well, let's get to work. Maybe I'll be able to get _some_ sleep before I go."

Willy let him in and, as he shut the door, made a motion of his head in the direction of the listening device. Barney nodded. He pulled out a recording he and Willy had made earlier and switched it on. It was nothing more than desultory talk, small mechanical sounds, Barney occasionally snoring and Willy rudely waking him up. It covered the sounds of Barney running through the preparations he would have to do more quickly tomorrow. Willy removed the tiny recording device from Cinnamon's larger recorder and placed it in Barney's compartment in his large equipment case, along with everything else he would need. When Barney was satisfied, he took the film Willy had recorded, tucked it under his arm, and opened the door.

"Dosvedanya," he said.

"A safe journey."

Barney left the hotel with the film. When he had determined that no one was following him, he doubled back and ducked into Willy's equipment van. Barney could and did sleep anywhere.


	13. Chapter 13

Just before closing, Jim strode up the steps of the People's Museum. His makeup was a masterpiece. It was very minimal, pieces that broadened his face, lengthened his nose, made him look Slavic instead of Germanic. Rollin had made all the pieces, but Jim, like all IMF agents, knew what to do with them. He had also combed something through his hair that made it light golden brown, grey at the temples, but his eyes stayed blue. His suit and long coat were also pure masterpieces: once the latest cut and best material, they had been worn long and hard, as by a man who had the money and prestige to dress well but was more interested in work. Cinnamon, Rollin, and Barney had all had a hand in it.

He walked directly up to the receptionist's desk and demanded in Polish to see the Director. He receptionist looked at him blankly, so he repeated it in Czech.

"I'm sorry, Comrade, but you can't just—"

He took a card out of his wallet and gave it to her.

"Oh! One moment, please."

Moments later he was sitting across a desk from Director Hlaváček, a stout, gentle-looking man with grey hair, who was holding the card identifying Jim as a police detective in very high standing from Warsaw, named Jakub Tomasz, along with a short note signed by the local chief of police. They spoke in Polish.

"I am here to inform you, Director, that your museum is going to be robbed tonight."

The Director rose slowly to his feet. "What? How can you know so?"

"I know because I have spent the last fifteen years tracking this man, this Andrzej Klimek, all across the Soviet Union. I have made it my career to capture him. He is my particular nemesis, and I am his.

"He is a veritable devil, Klimek. I know him personally, you see. We served together in the war. I admired him then. You know what we Poles are," he said proudly. "Independent, proud, stubborn, indomitable. He is all of these, and more. Sometimes I think he is as much a friend as he is an enemy. I admire him, to be honest. And yet I am as determined to capture him as he is to elude me.

"I have tracked him here, to Herzvolakia, and when I knew he was coming here, I knew instantly what he was after. It has been his dream to steal the Crown of King Karel for some years, as much because of the security measures you have put in place as because of the crown itself. He excels at defeating the mind game of such measures. I believe he has one of two buyers lined up, either an American named Davis Wesley who loves such trinkets and is eager to see your country lose such a testament to your present Soviet loyalty, or one of the few remaining noble Herzvolakian traitors living in one of the Western European capitalist countries." He spat contemptuously. "You and I, Comrade Director, will stop him from doing this. You have a small country, maybe unimportant, but never let it be said that a Pole was responsible for bringing a Soviet country into disrepute!"

Director Hlaváček looked impressed. "Thank you, Comrade Tomasz. But why do we not have police support?"

"Your Chief of Police, Comrade Kopecky, offered, but I could tell he had no one to spare. With all the foreigners and dignitaries who are coming in for that big government announcement, his men are overbooked already. That's why Klimek chose today. Tomorrow would have been better, but he doesn't like to make it too easy on himself. That's the sort of man he is. But Comrade Kopecky told me your men are more than adequate to do the job. In fact, he said your guards are among the best in the country."

Director Hlaváček smiled. "They have to be. They don't guard historical artifacts alone but also some of the country's most secure documents. You don't think Klimek will go for those, do you?"

"No. He has a romantic mind, Klimek does. He wants golden articles, pretty statues, bits of paint and wood—artsy stuff. Things Americans like Davis Wesley want to buy. He doesn't care if documents are more important, or even if they'll get more money. He's an adventurer. He likes challenges and handling beautiful things.

"Now, here's what we'll do, Comrade Director. You'll follow your normal closing and evening guard routine. I'll go along in the uniform of one of the guards. I want to inspect the security arrangements. He knows I'm here, of course. He's here somewhere too."

The Director started to his feet again. "Then we can find him!"

"No! I have to catch him in the act, Comrade Director. Catch him now and all he gets is a month or two for breaking and entering. I've been through that with him before. I catch him, he gets out again immediately. I have never been able to catch him in the very act. Today will change all that."


	14. Chapter 14

Rollin checked his watch. "Jim will be talking to the Director now. Once we hear the guards go by on their first inspection, it'll be time to get you into place. It's alright if I'm seen, as they've been ordered not to see me until Jim arrests me, but you must be invisible."

Jack nodded. She peeled off her smart outfit to reveal her black gymnast's suit underneath, pulled down her black leggings to her ankles and black sleeves to her wrists, took off her shoes, which had been covering flexible black slippers, pulled on a pair of thick black gloves. Rollin rolled down the legs on his pants, turned his shirt inside out so that it went from a grey sweater to a black button-up, and wrapped his short jacket with everything Jack took off, along with her schoolgirl braids. He pushed it all down into a bucket, shoved dirty rags on top, and stood a mop up in it. Her blue and his black contacts all went into the bottom of a grimy, mostly-empty bottle of bleach. They both wiped off all of earlier's makeup, checked each other's faces to make sure it was gone. There could be no association between their final roles and the young Romanian sweethearts.

When they heard the guards' footsteps, they froze and didn't move until the steps disappeared.

"Ready now?" Rollin asked.

"Just about." She pulled a small black knapsack out of her schoolgirl satchel, which had served as a purse for her young Romanian. Rollin shoved the satchel down behind the mops and buckets and helped her secure the knapsack to her back so it couldn't shift. Lastly they synchronized their watches to the hundredth of a second.

They slipped silently out of the closet and made their way through labyrinthine corridors in the dark, following memorized plans. Only once they had to duck deep into shadow as a guard walked past; Rollin stood directly in front of Jack so that if the guard saw anything, he would only be seeing Rollin. He didn't see, however, and passed on. Just where Jim had told them it would be, there was a grate leading to a heating duct high up on the wall at the end of a corridor. Rollin braced himself and boosted Jack up onto his shoulders; she unscrewed the bolts holding the grate and handed it down to him, then pulled herself up into the black hole. He handed the grate back up, and she fit it into place. Giving his lopsided, encouraging smile in her direction and receiving a finger waggle through the grate in return, Rollin turned and went back the way they'd come.

There were no guards in the corridors now. He got to the last door leading into the main areas of the museum and flattened himself against the wall. He stood for ten minutes, just listening. It took special training to simply stand without ever shifting the weight, catching a breath. He had not got the impression that the guards had that training, so it was fairly safe to presume there was no one in the room beyond. He slipped out of the door and through the maze of the museum.

The most central room of the museum held treasures from the pre-Soviet era, items once owned by royalty, now serving as a testament to the power that had once defeated royalty all across Europe. In the very middle of the room, on a high pedestal, stood the ancient gold crown set with round gemstones of a great Herzvolakian king from the 14th Century, her only remarkable king, in fact. It was surrounded by a sensor grid very much like the one that would face Jack in the basement vaults. Rollin checked his watch. She needed ten more minutes. He crossed to a large statue, dating from the 15th Century, and tucked himself up high into a surprisingly small niche between it and the wall, in deep shadow.


	15. Chapter 15

Jack made her way along the small heating ducts, climbing downward through spaces no grown man could have gotten through. After what seemed like far too much time, but was just the right amount, by her watch, she was overlooking the corridor leading to the vaults. Along its entire length, red beams formed a complicated design in the air. She reached back into her knapsack and pulled out a small canister Barney had given her, began putting pieces together. Three more minutes.

* * *

><p>On the mark, Rollin leaned down out of his shadow and flicked a ball of paper across the room and through the security grid around the Crown of King Karel. Alarms immediately rang out through the whole building.<p>

* * *

><p>Guards ran, searching. Jim and the Director ran with them.<p>

"It's still here!" the Director hissed, staring at the crown.

Jim stepped on the ball of paper. It stuck to the bottom of his shoe, lined with small, sticky spots. "I know. Come on."

They left the guards to their frantic searching and returned to the Director's office.

"I expected this. It's why I didn't set guards in the room itself. I think he's playing with us, or trying to exhaust the guards. Well, let him play. I know his mind. He won't leave here a free man."

* * *

><p>The moment the alarms began, Jack shot a small projectile through the security grid in the corridor. It embedded itself into the far wall. A sturdy line now stretched from her hiding place to the wall. It did not touch any of the lasers. Barney had drilled her again and again on her aim, formulating any number of laser patterns that she had to fire through and not hit. But she, like Dan was a good shot.<p>

The alarms were still going. She grasped the cord and swung herself out into the corridor, swung hard, and landed far down the corridor, square between two beams of light. No stuck landing in any gymnastics competition had ever meant more than this one, for almost the same moment as her landing, the alarms went off. Now it was up to her to get the rest of the way through without setting them off herself. When they were set off in the basement, a different alarm light went off in the Director's office than was triggered for the museum artifacts. Part of Jim's job was keeping the Director distracted from the lights.

* * *

><p>Rollin had been staring at the just barely glowing dials of his watch without blinking. On the dot of the predetermined moment, he flicked another paper wad. Mayhem broke loose again.<p>

* * *

><p>Jack had found the lasers tricky, but not more so than a balance beam routine. Olympic selection committees were more demanding as to precision than lasers, which only required you to go around them, not to look beautiful while you did it. She had been standing at the door of the vault for several minutes testing the tumblers without moving the dial by the use of a magnetic device Barney had given her. The vault was rigged to trigger the alarm if the dial was turned incorrectly, and the Director couldn't fail to see the basement warning light in his office.<p>

Now when the alarms went off for the second time, she was ready and dialed instantly and accurately. The only problem with being so small as a safecracker was that safe doors were so _heavy._ She hauled it open with all her might.

Barney had taught her what controls to look for to find out if the vault floor was rigged. She found them present and stared at them for a moment. She didn't have the key to deactivate the floor.

* * *

><p>"Let's leave the alarm running a few more minutes and make <em>him<em> wonder what _we're_ up to," Jim said.

"But we're not up to anything," the Director protested.

"Precisely. I told you, Comrade, with Klimek it's all a mind game. He plays games; we play games."

"I am glad you know what you're doing, because I certainly don't."

* * *

><p>Taking another canister out of her bag, Jack shot it across the vault so that it lodged near the ceiling. She stood in the doorway, leapt, and attached the opposite end just above the door, then pulled herself up onto the wire, hung upside down, and pulled the door closed. Now she affixed two more wires perpendicular to the first, giving herself something to lie on as she pulled open the filing cabinets the vault was filled with.<p>

One cabinet was locked, and, hanging upside down again, she picked it, found a number of tapes, and inserted one into a small player with a wire that ran into her ear, hearing-aid-like. When she turned it on, tears started immediately from her eyes, for she was hearing her own father's voice, weak, frail, as she had never heard him before. At the last moment she reached down and caught her falling tear before it hit the floor.

She quickly wiped her eyes and found another tape, went through them all and found three with her father's voice, which one after another she made copies of in the machine Barney had given her. So much equipment, and he managed to make it all miniature enough to fit in a little bag that fit in the small of her back.

The tapes copied, she replaced the originals and pulled one last device from her bag. This was a tiny, fragile capsule, which she crushed between her fingers and dropped into the drawer before closing and re-locking it. It would slowly release a corrosive chemical into the drawer which would dissolve the tape itself inside each spool and dissipate, leaving no trace of how they had disappeared.

She checked her watch. Two more minutes. She was cutting it very close, but they hadn't known how many tapes there were. Pulling herself onto her first wire, she disengaged the two perpendicular wires with the particular series of twists Barney had showed her. The wires shot back into their canisters and went back into her bag. Finally she hung upside down from the first wire in front of the door, watching her time piece.

* * *

><p>Rollin got another piece of paper ready. One of the hardest things to do as an agent was to trust the timeline, trust that it worked properly for everyone concerned. The time they had given Jack to do her work in the vault—was it enough? Or to get the vault door open? Or to make it through the laser corridor? He would faithfully throw his foolish little paper bullets on time every time, never knowing how her side was going. He'd been on the receiving end of ill-judged timing before. It was never good. All you could really do was trust your teammate, watch the clock, throw your paper bullets, and pray.<p>

He threw his paper bullet.


	16. Chapter 16

"Oh, really, this is getting too tiresome," Director Hlaváček sighed. "I'm getting too old for such games. I suppose you young men still enjoy them, but I would rather be at home in bed."

"I am not so young as I once was, and I cannot help but hope that this is the last game I will have to play with my old friend Klimek. But still, it is a good one. He is trying to get us to turn off the alarm. They make the sound very annoying, do they not? How many people in the neighborhood have we woken up? I'll be surprised if there isn't a mob at the door. But when I bring Klimek out and you announce that we prevented him from stealing that old yellow circular object you prize so much, they will forgive us and call us heroes. And being a hero is worth the loss of one night's sleep, surely?"

"Perhaps," the Director conceded.

"But I'll tell you what. We'll force his hand. He could go on like this all night, I'm sure, if we let him, but we can't let him have it all his own way. Let's turn off the alarm. We'll still see what's happening by the light here. He'll suspect something's up when we don't all come rushing out, so he'll be more cautious, but also more bold. We'll allow the time to drag on, and he'll get anxious. If he has one weakness, it's his impatience when he doesn't know what's going on. He'll make a real try for the crown, and that time the alarm will be on, and we'll have got him. We'll even let him take it, just to catch him with it. Eh, Comrade Director?"

"You make my head spin with all your turnings on and turnings off and rushing around. I am aging years tonight. Please just catch him and have done with it."

"Alright. We'll turn off the alarm bells. Alert the guards to a careful watch of all exit points. Then you stay comfortably there at your desk, and I'll be here by the door, and we'll both watch for the light."

He leaned against the panel that held the warning light for the vaults, effectively shielding it from the Director's eyes. The Director was staring so intently at the warning light for the museum that he didn't notice.

* * *

><p>Jack was back through the corridor, standing under her wire. She could conceivably climb back onto it without tripping the alarm, but the mechanism that recalled it to its canister had proven unreliable in practice. There was always a violent jolt when it came away from the wall that would certainly trip the alarm. She simply had to depend on Jim to be distracting the Director from the light.<p>

Right on the second she leapt and pulled herself up, swung along the wire to her vent, slid into it, and released the wire. The recoil was so strong it almost hit her. She was really going to have to talk to Barney about perfecting it. Packing it up quickly, she was soon sliding back along the ventilation shafts.

* * *

><p>Rollin's back and limbs hurt from his position between the statue and the wall. Still, that was nothing. Discomfort and pain were a normal part of this job. He couldn't count how many times he'd purposefully walked straight into a beating, or worse, just to buy time or deflect attention or carry on a role. Still, it was a relief, when his watch told him it was time, to leap down out of his shadow and work the kinks out of his limbs.<p>

Barney and Jack were the ones who were really good at hiding. Rollin's job was to walk straight out in full view of everyone and make them believe he was someone else. He had such a distinctive face it should never have been possible, but he knew that identity was as much posture and voice and gesture as in the face. Change just the slightest mannerism, and you could become "that man who looked like so-and-so," when moments ago you'd made them believe you _were_ so-and-so. That was what Rollin lived for, the delicious feeling of wearing a new identity, the thrill of walking invisible in front of his enemies.

Now he walked straight across the floor, thrust his hand into the security grid, and grabbed the crown. The alarms made him flinch. He darted back across the floor and dived into shadow just as the guards spilled across the room.

Jim finally found him molding himself into an impossible hollow in the underside of a table. He hauled him out by the hair and elbow, and Rollin gave the performance of a man who knew he was fairly beaten by a worthy opponent. A quick frisking found the gold circlet inside his shirt. The guard who had caught him kissing Jack earlier was staring straight at him without a trace of recognition.

"Well, Andrzej, it's over," Jim drawled easily in Polish, handcuffing him. "You've had a good run, and now it's time to pay for it."

He thrust his head back proudly. "I have always been prepared for that. But you must promise me one thing, Jakub. Don't let me be tried by foreigners. Take me back to Poland."

"I will do my best, but you know you must be presented to the Chief of Police here."

"Naturally, but I'll kill myself before I let foreigners try me."

"Stop being so melodramatic." Jim turned to Director Hlaváček. "Comrade Director, I thank you. I will tell Comrade Kopecky of your great patience with my peculiar methods and of the professionalism of your guards. Your name will always be linked to the capture of Andrzej Klimek."

"Thank you, Comrade Tomasz. Let me walk you to your car."

The Director escorted them to Jim's big, black car, wrung his hand, just barely stopped himself from wringing Rollin's hand, and tottered away. The sun was just rising. Rollin freed himself from the handcuffs as Jim pulled away from the museum.

"Your new makeup is in that bag there."


	17. Chapter 17

The morning guard shift had just taken over from the night guards at the People's Museum and had gotten an earful of what had gone on that night. Most were disappointed to have missed it. The Director had gone home to bed.

On the first round of the morning, a guard heard a very strange sound coming from a closet. The door was locked from the outside. He unlocked it and threw it open to find a little girl staring up at him, sobbing. She was wearing filthy school clothes and a too-big jacket and had long, very messy black braids. He took her by the arm and pulled her out.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"I got locked in, last night," she sobbed. "And I shouted and pounded on the door, and no one came, and there were alarms going off all night so I never slept, and I am _so hungry!"_

"Come now, come now," he said more gently. "Come to the guard room, and I'll get you something to eat, and you can tell me how to find your parents."

She snatched up her school satchel and put her small hand in his, trying to stop crying. "I don't have any parents. I came here to live with my uncle and aunt."

"How did you get locked in? You're not allowed in these areas."

"My grandfather brought me here after school yesterday, but he only wanted to tell old war stories, and they were boring. When he got tired of walking around, he sat down and went to sleep, and I thought I would look around by myself. My uncle was supposed to come get me so my grandfather could go to his old war heroes' meeting or something, but when I came back my grandfather was gone, and my uncle wasn't here. So I looked around some more, for a long time, and when I saw a man in a suit go through this other door, I thought it was my uncle and followed him, only it wasn't and the door locked, and I was afraid. When the alarms started, I thought I did it, and I hid in that closet, and _that_ door locked, and I couldn't get it open, and I thought I would starve to death in there—" She was crying again.

"Oh, stop now. You're not going to starve."

They had come to the guard room, and all the other guards stared and pelted them with questions, while she cheered up over bread, cheese, and weak coffee. She told again everything that had happened to her and even started to enjoy describing how many times the alarms went off, while her wide eyes at the tale of the attempted robbery almost made them feel that they'd caught the burglar themselves.

Cutting across the camaraderie was the sound of a disturbance outside. An old man had climbed the steps and was pounding on the door with his cane and shouting.

"We're not open yet," the door guard told him.

"I don't care! I demand my granddaughter!"

"Your granddaughter?" he repeated in bewilderment, not having been privy to the scene in the guard room.

"My granddaughter! Her worthless uncle was supposed to come get her? Did he? No! He goes home thinking I have her. I go home thinking he has her. And where is she? At the museum!"

"I assure you, Comrade, no young girls have come here this morning—"

"Not this morning, you fool! Last night! You people locked my granddaughter up here all night, and I want her back!"

"Old Comrade, I assure you—"

"Grandpapa!" A small figure came flying across the entrance hall and tackled the old man rather over-hard. "Oh, Grandpapa, it was so frightening! I was locked in all night! But the guards gave me breakfast."

"Oh, Zdenka, my little Zdenka." His old hand shook as he smoothed her hair. "We were all so mixed up. This is what comes of letting your aunt marry a Herzvolakian and drag us all here instead of staying where we belonged in Czechoslovakia. Come, I'm taking you home immediately, and won't I tell off your uncle when we get there!"

She gave a wave to the guards as he led her off down the steps, and they waved back. It had been a very eventful couple of days at the Museum.


	18. Chapter 18

Jack and Rollin stayed in character until they were several blocks away. Then they both burst out laughing and were still laughing when they got into the black car.

"That looks like it went well," Jim smiled.

"I never thought it would be so fun!" Jack exclaimed.

"You did extremely well," Rollin told her. "I completely believed you. Well—most of the time."

She went red and quickly changed the subject. "Those eye drops, though—those were _awful."_

"Well, once we get home, I'll teach you to cry properly—_if_ you'll consent to continue playing roles instead of hiding in boxes all the time. It would be wrong not to."

Jack shrugged. "If I'm needed to, I'm needed to. That's all."

"Good girl."

She rolled her eyes.

"Now for the tapes," Jim said. "The extra blanks are there. You'd better copy them over quickly."

Jack started the copies, and while they were running, she changed back into the clothing she had worn to meet Janek. Rollin was already wearing his, under the coat he had worn as her grandfather, which happened to be the same coat Jim had worn as the Polish detective. Rollin's very behavior had turned it into a worn old work coat belonging to a poor foreigner.

When the tapes were done, she gave one copy of each to Rollin and put the others in the pocket of her jacket, balancing the last one on her hand first with a pensive look. "He's on these. I want to hear them."

Jim cast a glance back at her. "Do you think that's wise?"

"I do not know. But I want to."

He put his hand back over the seat and patted her shoulder. "Later, when it's done. We don't have the luxury of time for your emotions to get caught up in them."

"I know. Don't worry: I know. I was trained by the best in putting emotions aside, you know."

"Yes, I know," he said in his turn.

They abandoned the car some blocks from the hotel and walked. In their guise as peasant visitors who had won a trip as a prize, they had been given rooms in the same hotel as Cinnamon and Willy. They would be closely watched, however, and could not afford to communicate directly with the other half of their team. But as they walked down the hallway to their rooms, Jim began to sing loudly a song in Hungarian. Annoyed heads popped out of doors, including Willy's.

"Quiet down there!" he ordered in Russian. "People are still asleep."

"Look, Comrade," Jim slurred in Hungarian, "I won this trip, and I'm goin' to do what I want with it. I'm havin' breakfas' with Sec'try Janek today. What're _you_ doin'?"

"Please, just go to your room before you wake my colleague up. We have too much work to do today, and she needs to look her best."

"Oh…pretty, is she?" Jim said in bad Russian. "Lemme see."

Willy stood in front of the door with crossed arms, glaring and looking intimidating. Jim was a good-sized man, but Willy was much bigger. It was something of a miracle that his good-natured face could summon a scowl, though.

"Return to your room."

Rollin took Jim's arm. "Come on, Karl. Time to get you sobered up before the big breakfast."

He and Jack managed to drag Jim into his room. Now Willy knew that they had succeeded, and they knew his team had had a setback but were expecting to come out alright.

Jim dropped the drunk act and said roughly in Hungarian, "You two get cleaned up. Especially you, Zhaklina. You're filthy."

"Don't start on her," Rollin snapped. "She's the one who did all the hard work."

"Please don't start arguing," Jack begged. "I'm so tired."

"You can sleep later. There's still work to be done." They were all looking, but Jim was the one who found the bug and pointed it out. "Marko and I will leave for breakfast shortly. You make sure you get well away and aren't seen, and if you lose your copy of the tapes, by heaven I'll—"

"_You'll_ do nothing," Rollin interrupted. "If she loses them, _I'll_ give her a hiding, but you won't lay a finger on her, Karl."

"I won't lose them!" Jack shouted. "You men! Just because I'm a girl you think I'm less responsible. Well, _I'm _the one who got the tapes, and _I'm_ the one who's going to sell them to—"

"Shhh! Keep your voice down, you stupid girl! Don't you know this place is probably swarming with spies?" Jim asked with dancing eyes.

"Everyone just be quiet for a while until it's time to go," Rollin said wearily. "All this arguing is pointless." He threw himself down on one of the beds.

Jack cleaned herself up and curled up on the other, instantly asleep. Jim let her sleep for about half an hour before waking her up again.

"Time to go. Remember, Zhaklina, give us about ten minutes before you leave. We'll tell the Secretary that we were stupid enough to let you go out with us last night, and now you're too exhausted and hung over to go to the breakfast, but you'll join us later."

"Right."

"Don't get caught."

"I won't get caught! No one has a clue. Now go!"

Ten minutes after the men left, Jack slipped out of the window and climbed down the outside of the building. Her watchers had no idea how she got out, but it only took them fifteen minutes to find her.


	19. Chapter 19

"What is the meaning of this?" Janek demanded angrily.

"Only that we don't think you're paying us quite enough for the trouble we went through," Jim answered. "And if we don't get the additional payment we require, these tapes will go to the First Secretary, who I don't think is aware of their existence but who _will_ pay for them to keep them out of your hands."

"This is outrageous. Bohuslav assured me that you were professionals, but this is not professional behavior." A small pistol was in his hand, and another in Viktor Kladivo's. "Now, I will take the tapes."

"Do you think we're stupid? My young female associate has copies, and if she doesn't see me waving from this window, she will go directly to the First Secretary. And I assure you, she will know from my gesture whether you are holding a gun on me or not."

"Do _you_ think I am stupid? I have known of your plan all along, and look: your young associate won't be able to see your secret gestures from that window, but maybe she will if you simply turn around."

Jim and Rollin wheeled around. Two of Janek's guards were hauling a kicking, scratching, fighting Jack into the office.

"Zhaklina!" Rollin cried.

"Let go of me, you pigs!" she shouted in Hungarian. "Do you treat all your guests like this?"

"Be quiet!" Janek ordered in Czech. "Did you get the tapes off her?" he asked the guard.

Jim broke away from him. "You little fool! Why did you let yourself get caught?" He hit her across the face so hard she went sprawling.

Rollin shouted in rage and attacked him, receiving a black eye in return, which made Jack vault herself up off the floor at Jim. They all had bruises and welts by the time the guards and Viktor managed to separate them. Jack was most colorful, looking small and pugnacious with her split lip and bruised cheek and forehead. Rollin seethed, touching his swollen eye gently, and Jim glowered at them both.

"You are a disgrace," Janek snapped, "and I will tell Bohuslav so. Viktor, take them to the station and tell Comrade Kopecky that they are special political prisoners and that I will be dealing with them myself later. They must be kept separate from other prisoners."

"I protest!" Rollin said between his teeth. "We did your dirty work for you."

"And tried to betray me."

"Comrade, perhaps you'd better check the tapes first and make sure they really are what these people say they are," Viktor said stolidly.

"Yes, of course."

In a moment they could all hear Dan Briggs' voice. Rollin went pale and kept rubbing his thumb over his eye with a short hiss of pain. Jim stared hard at Jack, and when it looked like she was going to betray tears, he grabbed her arm, pulled her up close, and snarled at her in Hungarian.

"Go ahead and cry because I'm hurting you," he whispered, "if you have to."

She wiped her tears away angrily. "I'm not afraid of you, Karl!"

"Leave her alone!" Rollin exclaimed.

The guards pulled them apart.

"Get them out of here!" Janek ordered. "It's my man alright. I don't need them any more, but later I'll need to find out who they're in league with. The Bulgarians, probably. As for these copies…I can't risk them falling into the wrong hands. I must hold the only tapes."

He pulled the tape out of the spools, shoved it all down into his fireplace, and lit it on fire. The team all glared at him as one and bit back satisfied grins.

"Now take them away!"

The guards—two each for Jim and Rollin and one for Jack—marched them out of the office. In the outer office, they went past Cinnamon and Willy; they both stared with wide eyes as the group passed.

Behind, they heard Cinnamon say, "Comrade Janek, who are those people?"

"They tried to kill me," Janek answered.

* * *

><p>Barney waited, patiently. If he had not been a naturally patient, persistent man, his job would have driven him insane long ago. Waiting in cars, waiting in boxes, waiting in elevator shafts, waiting in safes… Now waiting in a van for the time when he would be waiting in a television camera case.<p>

Willy stuck his head in the van. "She wants the camera equipment. Janek has a big story about Jack trying to kill him."

Barney snorted. "Brilliant. We can do a lot with that."

"That's what I thought. Also they'll search the camera case when I bring it in, so maybe they won't need to search it when we go into the research facility."

"Good."

Willy took the case away, and Barney waited again. It was a little less than an hour before the door opened again and Willy pushed the case back in.

"Good story. Fairly plausible. Here's the audio. Better get ready while we drive. Cinnamon's going with Janek."

"When's she doing the watch?"

"As close to the end of the tour as possible."

Willy closed the back of the van and got in the driver's seat. Barney immediately opened the case and crawled into the compartment Rollin had designed and he himself had built. They'd made it as comfortable as possible, because he would be spending a lot of time in it. He settled down and tried to get a little sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

"A very impressive building," Cinnamon said as the Secretary's car pulled up outside the governmental research facility. "Your brother must have felt great pride coming to work here."

""My brother felt little about anything except his work. It was his one weakness, that he cared more for machines than patriotism. Of course you must not mistake me. He was never unpatriotic, but his machines came first, always."

"Well, given that his machine will be in creasing your nation's glory, perhaps his love of them _was_ his patriotism. And after all, not all men can be great leaders. Some have to sit quietly in the background, creating the structures the countries run on."

"This is so, this is so. Please, come inside, Natasha."

In the van behind them, Willy pulled out his tall camera case yet again. Previously he had been straining rather more than was necessary in getting it in and out of the van and onto its transportation wheels. Crystal Briggs had once taught him the importance of sometimes making a thing look harder than it really was, when he was used to making things look easier. Cinnamon had teased him yesterday and called him a weakling, which made Janek laugh. Now the strain of carrying Barney along with the equipment was comparable to the strain he had been feigning.

Inside the front doors. Willy wheeled his case straight to the usual guard station with his patently placid expression. Janek said, "What are you doing, Smertnovsky?"

"Preparing to be searched again, Comrade."

"What for? Your case has already been searched today, and you are with me, after all."

"Comrade Smertnovsky is a stickler for the proper forms," Cinnamon said. "Alexei, you get full marks. Now come along."

"Natasha, I do wish you would not tease me in public," he whispered to her in the elevator. "What will Comrade Janek think?"

"Comrade Janek is an intelligent man, Alexei," she said composedly. "I don't need to worry about what he will think."

Comrade Janek was smirking to himself.

"Now, Natasha, you know I must leave you for a short meeting with some of my scientists. I will have my top aide begin the tour and show you where you may film, and then I myself will take over."

"Comrade Janek, you have already been so generous to us. I don't know how to thank you."

"Comrade Denisovna, your very presence here and this program you are producing do me great honor. Herzvolakia herself will be assisted by your work. As for me, it is a pleasure to spend this time with you."

She looked down, swept her long eyelashes over her sparkling blue eyes, a faint color coming into her cheeks. Janek, with an admiring look, ushered them into an office and introduced them to the aide he had assigned them. It had already been determined that it would be useless for Barney to try to get out of the case in any of the main offices. Their duct work was too small for him and their entrances too public.

Willy pulled his smaller camera out of the case. It was quite a large one; none of the other team members could have swung it up to a shoulder and balanced it there so easily.

"We'll do this one first, Natasha," he said. "A walking tour of the whole facility with this kind aide, and then when Comrade Janek returns, I'll set up the lights and the other camera in a few strategic and historic locations for your interviews."

"Excellent, Alexei. That will be a wise use of our time."


	21. Chapter 21

Reluctant to leave the beautiful interviewer but anxious to get to work, Janek left them to his aide and took the tapes to the secure laboratory where his technicians waited for him.

"Is everything ready?"

"Yes, Comrade. The computer has already been fully programmed with the words that need to be used and tested with another voice recording. It works perfectly. We destroyed the results, of course. Now it only needs the tape of the voice it is to use."

Janek handed them over. One after another the technician fed them into the large and unwieldy machine that sat in a secure corner of the lab.

"How long will it take?"

"Oh, hours, Comrade. The computer must analyze every nuance of this man's voice. His words must be put together in such a way that no voice expert can ever doubt it is he. But I promise you will have them ready by morning."

"Very well. I will return in a few hours to listen to a sample."

"Yes, Comrade."

Janek went away to his real meeting. That was the problem with being in his position. It wasn't all grand receptions and making important announcements. It was mostly _meetings._

* * *

><p>Jim, Rollin, and Jack sat in two different cells in the secure wing of the police station. At Janek's request, Police Chief Kopecky had put Jim in a separate cell, to prevent further fighting among the fierce Hungarians. Kopecky did not recognize in the blond, Germanic Hungarian Karl the brown-haired, Slavic Polish detective Tomasz, who had apologetically called him early that morning to inform him that Andrzej Klimek had escaped his custody just after they left the People's Museum and now he must take up the hunt again. He was, however, rather confused about why Janek had said these three were so dangerous and likely to tear each other apart. They had come docilely into the station under heavy guard, looking incongruously battered and very bewildered, the dark girl clinging to her brother and the blond man trying to protect them while not antagonizing the guards. Now they sat in their separate cells, "Karl" glaring at the cell door and nursing the bruise on his jaw, "Marko" with his arm around "Zhaklina," smoothing her hair.<p>

"I'm sure it'll be alright, dear," he said in Czech. "They'll find out it's all a mistake soon enough, and then we'll get a big laugh out of it when we go home." He whispered, "You alright? He hit you pretty hard."

"Of course I'll be fine. Hurts like the dickens, but it's supposed to."

"I think you gave him a few good bruises yourself."

She giggled quietly. "It's not everyone whose job description includes punching her boss."

Jim's eyes twinkled at them through the cell bars.


	22. Chapter 22

Filming the facility and asking an aide questions was not one of the more glamorous aspects of the job. It was mere filler. Most aspects of a mission were filler. Cinnamon remembered Rollin telling her that those could be the moments that really counted in a true performance. People paid attention to you when you were in the limelight, but your whole role could be destroyed by a misstep in the background.

So they never broke character but carried on filming, and then their roles began again in earnest when Janek returned. Willy hauled his case out and set up his lights and larger camera in two or three strategic places. Cinnamon kept Janek talking about history and his brother, asked skilled questions about what they had done during WWII, and revealed a great deal of knowledge about his life. Long ago Cinnamon had demonstrated a phenomenal memory for names and facts. If any role in a mission required encyclopedic knowledge, Cinnamon played it. Jim could give her a fat file of information one day, and she would know it all the next day. He had done that very thing this time, giving her a file of information on the Janek brothers that had been compiled with the help of an agent inside the government research facility. That was also how they'd found out so much about the machine that the IMF technicians could partially reconstruct it. No one on the team knew who the agent was, and they didn't want to. He could do no more for them than he had done, and trying to get him to do more would only betray him.

Cinnamon purposefully kept things running at a rapid pace until there was only about half an hour left of their time before Janek had to go on to another meeting. Willy had been keeping careful track of the time, but Janek hadn't been, expecting an aide to alert him. When Willy gave her the particular look, she wound up the discussion while he put away his equipment, and then she came up close to Janek, putting her hand on his arm.

"Comrade Janek, you promised me you would let me see the machine my cousin and your brother gave their lives to and for."

"Did I? I don't remember doing so."

"I am sure you did, Comrade." With one fingernail she turned his watch back fifteen minutes, covering the motion by sliding her hand onto his.

After a moment of indecision, he said, "Well, I will let you see it, Natasha. Can it hurt, since you already know all about it? But you cannot come into the room itself."

"I only want to see it. I haven't been able to visualize this place where my cousin worked."

"Come, then."

Willy trundled quietly along behind them with his large case until they came to a locked-up section of the facility with a guard beside the door.

"You may not film inside the laboratory. You must leave the cameras out here."

Willy nodded. "Of course, Comrade."

He parked the case against the wall, conveniently in front of a large heating grate. Willy made a bit of a show about locking the case up and pocketing the keys and gave it a friendly pat on top. Then he and Cinnamon followed Janek into the secure area.

* * *

><p>Barney went to work immediately. He had to be absolutely silent in his work because of the guard, but he often did and was used to it. They had made his compartment in the case padded for the purpose of soundproofing as well as comfort.<p>

He slid the panel up and began by unscrewing the grate and pulling it into his compartment. Collecting his headlamp and tools, he slipped silently into the dark space and began his trek into the secure area. There would be more waiting when he got there.

* * *

><p>Cinnamon and Willy stood outside the glass-caged laboratory and watched Janek conferring with his technicians inside. When he came out, he was rubbing his hands together gleefully.<p>

"It works!" he said. "Oh, how it works! I would never have believed it. The voice of the man who haunts my waking hours, who destroyed my country—now it makes statements that will destroy his whole cause and the whole secret intelligence service of the country he worked for. With the knowledge in here—" he tapped his head "—and the voice in that machine, we will take them down."

"You and your brother, still working together," Cinnamon said softly.

"Yes," he nodded. "Yes, it is true." He checked his watch. "It is almost time for me to go to my next meeting. Never become a politician, Natasha, unless you happen to particularly like meetings."

"Comrade, before we go, I was wondering…" Willy said shyly.

"Wondering what?"

"Well… You see, I heard you were fond of vodka, and you know how we Russians pride ourselves on our vodka. My father was an excellent distiller of vodka, and when he died last year, he left a certain number of bottles of his best vintage. I brought one, in the hopes that you would honor me by accepting it." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle of clear liquid.

"Why, Comrade Smertnovsky, what an honor. I do accept, with thanks. What a pity I don't have a glass here, to toast you and Comrade Denisovna."

Blushing just slightly, Willy pulled out a small box and opened it, revealing a shot glass inscribed with "Smertnovsky Vodka" in Russian.

Janek laughed. "Natasha was right about you. You do like to follow all forms and cross every T. Thank you, Comrade." He poured a shot, tasted delicately, and threw the shot back. "Very, very excellent, Smertnovsky. A brilliant man, your father."

"I agree. Comrade, could I ask the great favor of taking a short clip of you drinking my father's vodka? Just to—to have, you know. For my children."

Moments later they were outside the secure area. Willy had lights and cameras strewn everywhere when Janek's aide came running down the corridor.

"Comrade! Comrade Janek! You are going to be late for your meeting!"

"No, no—I still have at least ten more minutes."

"No, Comrade, you should have left five minutes ago. If you hurry, you can still make it."

Janek rubbed his head, looking suddenly weary and confused. "But—"

"Please, Comrade! You know the First Secretary doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"I am coming." He turned to Willy. "You'll have to get your shot later. You must come."

Willy sighed and began to put his equipment together.

"You'll have to leave it. I don't have time to wait, and you can't stay here without me."

"But—"

"The equipment will be alright for the night, Alexei," Cinnamon said. "Look: this nice, big, armed guard will keep his eye on it the whole time. Won't you?" She smiled at him.

"Yes, Comrade. No one will touch it."

"But—"

"Stop worrying, Alexei! It won't hurt it to sit out or you not to put it away properly for once. Now, come. We're delaying Comrade Janek."

They left the facility. On the way to his meeting, Janek poured himself half a shot of vodka. It was really very excellent vodka. And the shot glass was not glass but a faintly porous substance laced with an hallucinogenic that slowly leached into the liquid it held.


	23. Chapter 23

After the meeting, the First Secretary said to an under-secretary, "Did Secretary Janek look well to you?"

"No, First Secretary. I thought he looked slightly ill, and he seemed confused, too. His question about the statue didn't see quite on point."

"He has been working very hard recently, and right after of his brother's death, too. Perhaps after his announcement tomorrow I'll tell him to take a bit of a rest."

* * *

><p>Cinnamon presented Police Chief Kopecky with an order signed by Janek for her and Willy to film the Hungarian prisoners. She had convinced him earlier that a clip of them would be a fine addition to the story of them trying to kill him.<p>

"Especially the young girl," she said. "All our youth, parents, and educators must see the result of a lack of proper training and indoctrination. What might she have been if she had been given the right Soviet education? Instead the state let a dangerous older brother control her, and he no doubt is controlled by that German who calls himself a Hungarian. Perhaps he is even a West German agent, sent to try to rid Herzvolakia of patriots like you who oppose the West. We must train our youth to recognize and be resistant to spies who would seduce them."

Now the three "Hungarians" played their roles for the benefit of Willy's smaller camera and Kopecky. Jim had been very reasonable but also not too bright, asking the beautiful Comrade if she could release them to continue their tour of Herzvolakia. Rollin had been protective of his little sister, who made herself very small indeed and bravely tried not to sob. She did work up the courage to approach the bars and wrap her small hands around them.

"Please, Comrade," she said in her charmingly broken Czech, "why do they keep us here?"

Cinnamon impulsively put her hands around the trembling little hand on the bar, slipping her a small makeup pencil as she did. "I don't know, child, but I'll find out."

"Thank you, Comrade, thank you."

Jack went back and sat next to Rollin, putting her head on his shoulder with an indescribable expression of childish trust, and slid the pencil into his hand.

"Don't overdo it, Zhaklina, dear," he murmured.

"Don't spoil my fun, Marko, dear," she murmured back.

When the jail lights were turned out for the night and a slight amount of light came in the high, barred window from the street, Rollin touched up Jack's bruises and cuts with the pencil, purple on one end and red on the other, so they looked much worse than they were, did his own, and traded the pencil for the yellow one Cinnamon had slipped Jim. The yellow added a faintly gruesome tinge.

"Makeup lessons, crying lessons, not-overdoing-it lessons," he ticked off on his fingers.

"You should start a school."

"Not until I'm too old and feeble to play the game myself."


	24. Chapter 24

The lab was quiet and dark, the only noise that of the machine reading over its punched cards and following their instructions. Barney had punched cards of his own, the audio from Cinnamon and Willy, pre-recorded tapes, and many little instruments. He slipped through the grate nearest the machine, picked the lock to the glass cage it was held in, crawled in behind it, and got to work.

All the hours of waiting were for this, his supreme moment, the moment when fatigue and the stiffness of being locked up in a box dissolved and all the world contained merely his task, that mechanical or electrical or electronic thing he had to disassemble or rewire or reprogram or rig in some way. The world was wires, connections, gears, tumblers, screws, tubes, circuits, punched cards, and his slim hands moved among them surely, never hesitating, doing what they were born to do.

Some part of his consciousness kept watch for him, observed the passage of time, listened for sounds, and only once did it break into his still world to tell him of a threat. He faded into shadow and held himself rigid while footsteps entered the lab. Two technicians, making rounds, checking on the machine's progress. He understood only the fragments of their conversation that were related to Czech.

One of the young men unlocked the glass box and came in, gave the machine a once-over, looked at a finished punched card, and froze momentarily. It was one of Barney's cards. He dropped it on the floor, bent around the machine to pick it up, and his eyes met Barney's. They both stared for just a split second, and then the young technician nodded once, put the card back, stepped out, and relocked the cage.

"How's it going?" the other called.

"Just fine. Processing a little more slowly than we thought, but it'll be done by morning."

"Then I'm getting some sleep."

The footsteps receded, and Barney collapsed back against the wall in a puddle of sweat. Then he drank some water and slipped back into his mechanical world. He worked faster than ever and was tucked up in his compartment in the camera case when Willy came to fetch it in the morning.


	25. Chapter 25

Janek had a stiff shot of vodka before letting Viktor admit all the dignitaries and media to his office. He'd had an uncomfortable night, his brain swirling with thoughts and impressions, fears for the next day, even though there was nothing that could go wrong. Maybe he was coming down with something. He'd actually felt ill last night and had gone to bed early rather than going to interrogate those troublesome Hungarians, as he intended. But after today his place in the government would be assured. There was still a faction, the First Secretary among them, who distrusted him because of what had happened ten years ago with Augustín Dalibor, and he had struggled to make his way ever since then. From now on, everything would be different. He set the Smertnovsky bottle and engraved glass aside. Such good stuff. Now he was ready.

He spent about ten minutes greeting people, the officials sent from four or five of Herzvolakia's closest allies for a meeting with the First Secretary, as well as for Janek's announcement. The members of the media came in after them and began setting up lights and cameras. Natasha Denisovna Griegoriev took a seat and gave him a slow smile, the kind of smile that said, _There is understanding between us._

Janek had chosen to speak in Russian, since it was the one language they all shared. "Comrades, what I wish to announce to you today is that Herzvolakia has succeeded in breaking through the shroud of secrecy that surrounds one of the most powerful and secretive intelligence services in the world. A top agent of this service has been persuaded to talk, and what he has told us has shocked even this government. The outrages enacted by this intelligence services against many of our own people will shock and horrify you. Even those governments that are most conciliatory toward his government have not escaped the rapacious jealousy of these people. Through a long series of—of—" He faltered, suddenly unsure of what he was talking about. What had he said already? Why couldn't he _think?_ "You—you will be shocked and horrified by—by the outrages—" He sat down heavily in a chair.

Someone touched his shoulder. "Secretary? What is it?"

"I—I do not feel well. Nevertheless, I will continue. I have put a decade of work into this and will not be stopped by a little head cold. Please, Comrades, I ask that you would listen to a portion of this confession we have taped. It is horrible to listen to, but we must know the truth about our enemy."

The things he had made Dan Briggs' voice say were horrible indeed. In the short clip he had listened to earlier when Viktor brought him the tapes, the American agent had confessed to murdering the children of a young mother in order to get her to betray her husband. Such things were so effective on some people. They had programmed the machine to make his voice say many things of that nature.

But something was wrong. The voice that came out of the tape was Dan Briggs', but it spoke Czech, not English, and it said pathetically, "I told you, I am Leoš Navrátil, from Bělčice in Czechoslovakia. Please don't hurt me anymore!"

And to his horror, he heard his own voice. "No! You are an American agent! If you do not say it, I will hunt down your family away in Bělčice, because the Czechoslovakian government is a friend to my government. Say it!"

"I will say whatever you want," the very un-American voice wept, "but do not hurt my family! Yes, I will be an American agent for you—"

And his own voice interrupted and did not allow the Briggs voice another chance to speak, for it went on and on in a complicated tumble of Czech, Russian, and Herzvolakian, raving in boastful tones of how great he would make Herzvolakia, how he would depose the First Secretary, how he would build up the nuclear program, take over Europe, defeat the Americans, and put a man on the moon, but in such a disjointed manner that it was difficult to understand him at all. He was rooted to his seat, unable to stop the travesty, while everyone in the room raised their voices in protest.

Finally he managed to lurch up out of his chair, his mind spinning. "No! That is not the right tape! Viktor, you brought the wrong tape! Go back to the lab and get the right one! Viktor, what is wrong with you?"

He found himself lying on the floor, and a horrible monster was looming over him. He shrieked and tried to fight it off. It said, "I am a doctor, Secretary Janek," but its teeth dripped blood, and he screamed again and fought it.

* * *

><p>Viktor knew he had to save his own situation as his superior was sedated by a doctor and everyone around him buzzed with astonishment. He could so easily look like the accomplice he was. The First Secretary was advancing to question him. He could deny everything—but that Russian reporter was stopping the First Secretary with a hand on his arm—and she knew everything. He slipped from the room. If only he could get to the laboratory, find the real tapes, explain everything in a way that showed he'd had Herzvolakia's good in mind…<p>

Two lab technicians met him outside the office. They were filthy and smelled of smoke. "Comrade Kladivo! It's horrible! We only just escaped with our lives!"

"What? What happened?"

"Something went horribly wrong with the machine! It shorted out and caught on fire! The whole lab is destroyed."


	26. Chapter 26

While Cinnamon caught the attention of the First Secretary, Willy slipped his hand into a pocket and pressed a button on a tiny device. Inside Janek's desk, the label on his vodka bottle dissolved, and the shot glass crumbled into a small pile of dust.

"Oh, First Secretary, this is so horrible," Cinnamon was saying. "I should have realized something was wrong yesterday. The Comrade Secretary's behavior was so _odd._ And then this morning we found this."

"What is it, Comrade?" he asked wearily, wondering how to save this shambles of a meeting.

"A recording I didn't know I had. If you listen to it, you might be able to save their lives. You see, I was waiting outside his office yesterday morning, and I was testing my recording device, and I must have forgotten to turn it off. It is very sensitive, and it picked up his conversation in his office with the Hungarians."

"What Hungarians?"

"The ones who won a trip to Herzvolakia. Don't you remember? It was well-advertized—I believe it was Secretary Janek's idea."

She played the recording for him, carried on partly in Herzvolakian, partly in Czech.

"You have come here to kill me, haven't you?"

Jim's voice, very bewildered: "No, Comrade! You invited us, remember? You gave us a trip to your beautiful country! Never before were we away from our homes—"

"No! You came to kill me. You knew I would be First Secretary soon, and you wanted to stop me, because the First Secretary is your stooge, you Bulgarians—"

"But we're Hungarian," Jack whimpered.

"Is that a _child?"_ the First Secretary interrupted.

Cinnamon nodded solemnly.

Janek, after some more raving about Bulgarians, said, "Viktor, take them and lock them up. They are to be executed."

And then Cinnamon's own voice on the tape: "Comrade Janek, who are those people?"

Janek's answer: "They tried to kill me."

"You see, Comrade First Secretary, you must release them before it's too late! I myself will take them home on my way back to Moscow. They have been through so much."

"A good thought," he said heavily. "You are a kind woman. And Under-Secretary Kladivo must be arrested."

The doctor, who happened to be an IMF agent, stopped them at the door. "First Secretary, Secretary Janek appears to have had a complete nervous breakdown. He requires complete rest. I cannot tell you at present how long it will be before he recovers, nor how long this has been coming on."

"Please make whatever arrangements are necessary."

"Comrade, I am sorry," Cinnamon said sincerely. "This will be most difficult for Herzvolakia."

"Not as difficult as having Henrich Janek as First Secretary would have been. _That_ would have been a disaster. Perhaps this has been a blessing in disguise."

* * *

><p>Police Chief Kopecky opened the jail doors for the First Secretary himself. The three "Hungarians" could hear them approaching before they saw them.<p>

"I assure you, Comrade Secretary, I did only what I was told. It did confuse me, these three in prison, especially the little girl, but I am a loyal Party member and obey my orders."

"Perhaps loyal Party members should be encouraged to think for themselves," the First Secretary murmured.

In the interim between hearing the Secretary and seeing him, Rollin seized Jack's chin and applied eye drops to her eyes, then dropped the tiny bottle (slipped to Jack by Cinnamon along with the makeup pencil) into a bowl of porridge that had been part of the breakfast given them. The pencils had been broken up and inserted in the mattress. Jack's eyes immediately overflowed, but she didn't blink.

"What's going to happen to us?" she said in Hungarian. "Marko, are they going to let us go home?"

"Hush, Zhaklina. Don't let them see you crying."

She wiped at her eyes, which of course only made their redness and her wet face all the more evident as the First Secretary came into view. No one would ever have said Jack was any older than twelve. Her rigorous gymnastics training had kept her figure undeveloped, and she made her 4'8" height seem even smaller by hunching up her shoulders timidly and standing on the side of her foot, as Rollin had taught her back in their practice sessions at home. He looked like nothing in the world more than a shabby laborer, as did Jim. The First Secretary stared at them all, then motioned Kopecky to open their cells.

"Herzvolakia apologizes to you," he said in Hungarian. "Your imprisonment has been a horrible mistake, but the man responsible has been dealt with. I wonder if I can offer you anything to try to make up for all this unpleasantness."

Jim seized his hand. "Herzvolakia has made us realize how much we belong at home. We are Hungarians; we ought to have stayed in Hungary. I miss my work, my tractor, the girl I wish to marry. I will go home immediately and ask her. I was hesitant before."

"Well, that's something, I suppose."

"None of our friends will ever believe that we have been mixed up with such great people, eh, Zhaklina?" Rollin nudged her. "They will say, 'You are making up these ridiculous stories to hide the fact that Herzvolakia wasn't as beautiful as Hungary!'"

"Marko, be quiet," Jack whispered. "Don't make them angry."

"Don't worry, child. We are not angry. A kind lady waits outside for you. She has clearance to take you straight home, if that is what you wish."

"We do wish it," Jim said, and they all left the station and got into the back of Cinnamon's car, which happened to be the car Jim had abandoned near the hotel, with different identification. Willy followed in the Russian television van, Barney hidden in the back.

Some miles out of the city, they turned down a side road and stopped by an empty field. Willy and Barney got out of the van, stripped off all its identifying markings, bundled the more valuable filming equipment into the trunk of the car, and got in the front next to Cinnamon. There were grins all round.

"Well done, people," Jim said.

Barney held up the tapes he had taken from Janek's machine. "Shall I destroy these, Jim?"

"Not yet. Jack wants to hear her father's voice."

"Oh—Jack—" Cinnamon began, but Barney nodded.

"I confess to having the same thought. It's our chance to say goodbye, Cinnamon."

He pulled out his player and slipped a tape in. Dan Briggs' quiet voice with his real words filled the car.

"My name is Dan Briggs. I'm here on business. I sell car parts. Just business, is all. Contact the dealership. I sold them the new carburetor models. I don't know who you've mistaken me for, but—"

He was interrupted by the interrogator's voice and the sound of a fist hitting flesh. Jack flinched. The others' training did not fail them, and they did not flinch, but Willy reached his big hand back over the seat and put it on Jack's shoulder. The interrogation grew more intensive, and Dan's voice remained the even, steady voice they knew, even when there was pain in it. Jack suddenly put her face on Rollin's shoulder and sobbed.

"That's enough, Barney," Jim said quietly. Jack wasn't the only one shaken.

Barney cleared his throat. "There's a bit at the end of the last tape you should all hear. I heard it as I was working on the tape to give to Janek." He switched tapes.

Dan's voice again, dragging, halting. "I guess you're going to kill me, aren't you?"

An affirmative from the interrogator.

"I wish I could say goodbye to my family. Do you have family, Colonel? Were you close to your siblings? I was. There was Meg—a beautiful girl, and brilliant, too—we teased her by calling her Nutmeg. I don't know how she put up with having so many brothers—"

Cinnamon gave a quiet sob.

"And little Bill, just a little pipsqueak, but always to be relied on if you needed help with your chores—"

Willy laughed and put a shaking hand to his eyes.

"And old Collin—we called him Collie Dog sometimes and teased him that he was adopted because he didn't look a thing like the rest of us, but he was always the one to put the wheels back on our skates when they broke—there wasn't anything that little brother of mine couldn't fix—"

Barney's face had taken on a familiar look of rigid hardness.

"But Roland was the one who always made us laugh and kept us entertained. He made our Christmas plays for our parents really sing. I'm going to miss the faces he made during class and got us in trouble for."

"He never lost his wit," Rollin murmured. "Still quick-thinking Dan."

"I wonder what happened to the neighbor kids, Jack and Crystal," Dan rambled on. "Crystal always complained that we didn't come over and play often enough, and I guess she was right. You never think that when you're an adult you're going to regret who you didn't play with as a kid, but just you wait, Colonel. Someday you'll regret missing all those little childhood things yourself. When you're ambitious, even as a child, you miss things. But I bet those kids grew up into great adults, just solid, reliable, intelligent people who make their parents and friends proud, just like my siblings did. I'll bet you anything. Maybe they'll look back on their childhoods and remember Dan from next door. Maybe they will, Colonel."

Barney stopped the tape. They all got out of the car. Jim put an arm around Jack and an arm around Cinnamon as Rollin, Willy, and Barney each took one of the tapes, unwound the tape from the spools, and burned them to ashes that blew away in the wind. It was a bit like being at a wake, a bit like disposing of ashes after a funeral. They stood for a moment looking across the flat, chilly landscape, and then they all got in the car and drove away.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: I am sorry for killing off Dan, who was one of my favorite characters, in such a terrible way, but he was the one who disappeared without any in-universe explanation, so I figured this was an explanation that was realistic and also kept him being a hero. It also was a good impetus for my OC Jack. <strong>

**I hope this story has come out as completely convoluted and outrageous as the missions in the television series.  
><strong>

**Herzvolakia is a complete construct of my own brain, of course, just like all the countries the original IMF team went to were fabrications by the writers and directors. All my Herzvolakian names are Czech, though, and all the other names that are declared to be Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, Russian, Polish or what have you really are Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, Russian, Polish, and so forth. The name I came up with for Rollin, Klimek, was the name of my own Polish ancestors.  
><strong>

**CT USSR was a real television station in Soviet Russia, and Programme Three was a real youth program started in 1967 or '68. First Secretary Grishin really was the leader of the Moscow Communist Party in the late 1960s. The 1968 Summer Olympics really were held in Mexico City, but Jack Briggs was not on the British gymnastics team. Karel really was the name of several Czech kings.**

**Of course large parts of my whole museum scene were lifted direct from "How To Steal A Million," with Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn, a movie made in the same era as Mission: Impossible. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It's pure delight.  
><strong>

**Meanwhile, for those of us who just can't leave well enough alone, here is an epilogue, because I promised to explain why Cinnamon and Rollin left the team as well.**


	27. Epilogue

_Six months later_

"Cinnamon," Rollin asked, "does Jack dislike me?"

Cinnamon, helping him get ready for a role as a dictator of a North African country, stopped for a moment. "Why do you ask?"

"I have noticed that she treats me coldly. Perhaps distantly is a better word to describe it. She is warm and familiar with the rest of the team, even Jim—especially Jim—but she treats me as though we are only acquaintances, or are nothing more than teacher and pupil. I _had_ thought we worked remarkably well together, but I'm beginning to wonder if she trusts me. We can't afford not to trust each other in this business."

Cinnamon shook her head and handed him the spirit gum. "Of course she trusts you, you ninny. It's herself she doesn't trust. She's in love with you."

Rollin's hand stopped in the process of applying his first prosthetic, and his round green eyes stared at her. Cinnamon smiled at him pityingly.

"All your study of human nature, and you can't recognize the normal reactions of a twenty-one-year-old girl. Look, Rollin. She'd lost her father in a horrible way, lost her faith in his work and her own, been through a year of emotional upheaval, and then her first mission is a way of avenging him, and who is she paired with? You. An older but not too much older, unhandsome but terribly attractive man. And what do you do? You go and kiss her."

"_What?_ Cinnamon, that is ridiculous. Out of that whole, insane, complicated mission, you think _Dan Briggs'_ daughter would choose to fixate on the one logical way I had to get out of a tight situation?"

"Of course. You've never been a twenty-one-year-old girl, Rollin. I have. Of course, at her age I was much more experienced. She has had little experience with romantic entanglements. She's spent her whole life learning safecracking and gymnastics, working her way into the IMF and the British Worlds gymnastics team at the same time. I can't image there was much time for boys and romance. For all I know, you were the first person who ever kissed her, and that, Rollin, is a very significant thing to a young girl, even one who's a safecracker and Dan Briggs' daughter."

Rollin rubbed his hand over his dark head and agitatedly applied his new chin. "I meant nothing by it. I told her so. She understood."

"Of course she understood. She's intelligent and, Rollin, very professional. She doesn't let emotion get in the way. She has behaved extremely properly. No soft doe-eyes, no rushing to help you when you've been hurt, no trying to get appointed to teams you're on. You'd be surprised at the things girls can think up to get near the man they like. Jack has been nothing but professional. It's all she _could_ do."

"Yes—yes, I suppose so. Now what am _I_ supposed to do?"

Cinnamon kissed the top of his head with a twinkle in her eyes. "You'll figure it out."

* * *

><p><em>Five months later<em>

"Cinnamon told me something a while ago, Jack."

"Oh?" She was at his apartment, expecting her regular acting lesson, less than a week after their latest mission. Jim didn't always use her for his missions, but he still did rather frequently.

"She said you were in love with me."

Color flamed into Jack's face. "Oh, she did, did she? And who told her such a thing?"

"I presume she deduced it from knowing you. It seems I did you a…disservice by kissing you on our mission in Herzvolakia."

"Now wait a minute!" Jack said angrily. "You were only doing what was necessary. You _said_ so. I agreed."

"I know. But still…look me in the eyes and tell me she's wrong."

Jack looked him in the eyes, and then her dark eyes wavered and fell. Then they came up again. "Now you listen, Rollin Hand! I don't know _what_ Cinnamon told you, but I'm not as—as _stupid_ as it sounds. If you'd been just any old jerk who kissed me in the course of a mission, I might have experienced some palpitations, and then I would have _gotten over it._ But no, you were you, and you had—_character_—and—and humor and gentleness and loyalty and talent and—and dedication—and you'd be worth any woman loving, so I'm not going to be made ashamed of loving you! It's all your own fault, anyway. And now you can go tell Jim and get me kicked off the team, if that's what you have to do."

"Why would I do that?" he asked, as he had once before, with his whimsical, sideways smile.

"Well—" she said helplessly, suddenly deflated.

Rollin leaned forward and kissed her, and it was obvious that this was no professional, acting-a-role kiss. Jack, taken by as complete surprise as at the museum, responded for a moment just as she had been supposed to do at the museum, and then suddenly she shoved him away.

"What are you _doing?"_

"I am going to marry you, Jack Briggs. That's what."

"Are you _insane?_ What about Cinnamon?"

His brow wrinkled. "What about Cinnamon?"

"I thought—you and she—"

"Why does everyone think that? _Yes,_ we had a thing _once, _nearly ten years ago, Jack. She broke it off, and for a while I wished she hadn't. And then we became friends, and our friendship has been better and closer than our romance was. The romance became a bit of a joke between us. There is no one I trust more than Cinnamon, no one I'd rather have my back in a role. And there's no one I'd rather be married to than you. They're two completely different things, in case you haven't noticed. I only realized it myself after she pointed it out, a couple months ago."

"But—"

"Stop arguing."

He kissed her again, and she leaned into him with a blissful bewilderment.

"You realize," he murmured after a moment, "that I'm almost old enough to be your father."

"Don't be ridiculous. My father was a dozen years older than you. You're not remotely fatherly."

"I certainly hope not," he smirked. "So you'll marry me then?"

She straightened suddenly. "No, I can't marry you! Jim would never allow it! We'd never work together again!"

"About that, yes. I have been making plans. First of all, the new Secretary thinks that people who are related have a high chance of working well together, if they have a good track record in their relationship. In the second place, I have been offered the formation of my own team."

She gaped at him. "They want to make you an IMF leader?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, Jack, they offered me Dan's team two years ago. I turned it down. I wasn't ready. His death devastated us all, and I couldn't face the idea of trying to replace him. It was better to bring in someone from outside the core team. But my own team—I'm ready for that. And I am not opposed, as Jim is, to married people working on the same team. There's nothing against you and me working together on my team. Mine and Cinnamon's."

"Cinnamon's…?"

"I told you there's no one I'd rather work with than Cinnamon. I want her as my co-leader and replacement in an emergency. I wish I could steal Barney and Willy, too, but then it would be Dan's team again, and that wouldn't be fair to Jim."

"But you, me, and Cinnamon—is that right, just decimating Jim's team like that?"

Rollin smirked again. "My dearest Jack, you and I are replaceable. Jim has always liked working with Tina Mora, as you know, and I have a feeling that my good friend Paris would make a very valuable addition to Jim's team. They would work well together. And no matter what you and I do, Cinnamon cannot work with Jim anymore, by _his_ own rules."

"Whyever not?"

"Because they are going to be married."

Jack's mouth opened and closed.

"At least," Rollin amended, "they are if we can ever get Jim to let go of her as a team member. Don't tell me you haven't seen it. Ever since Cinnamon was captured and tortured and we traded her for Rudolf Kurtz, Jim has been just slightly protective of her. You weren't there. You didn't see his reaction when she got out of the car at the border. Cinnamon told me it wasn't until that mission that they both realized what they meant to each other. He's been a bit more unprofessional about it than you have been about me, as a matter of fact. Jim needs to have her off his team for his own sanity, as well as so he'll feel free to marry her."

"I don't believe it," Jack murmured.

"Believe it, my dear." He took her face in his hands. "Believe it and marry me—please?"

* * *

><p>In later years, when Rollin Hand was asked what conflict there had been between him and Jim Phelps that led him to break a successful IMF team in two and start his own, he always laughed and said, "Why does there have to be conflict in order for there to be a new start? Good things can come to an end and give birth to more good things without destructive conflict being the reason. When it was time for our team to end, two successful marriages and two new successful teams were born. That was reason enough, I should think."<p> 


End file.
